


#livfic

by openended



Series: Olivia Shepard [22]
Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-04
Updated: 2018-01-04
Packaged: 2019-02-28 02:16:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 40
Words: 22,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13261509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/openended/pseuds/openended
Summary: drabbles, tumblr prompts, etc for Olivia Shepard.Note that this is a little under construction over the next week as I add stories and rearrange them to be approximately chronological order.





	1. camping and shampoo (olivia + liara)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: having their hair washed

Olivia brings the Mako to a stop in a clearing at the base of the mountain. “We’re camping here for the night,” she announces, and turns off the tank. The clearing’s close enough to a river for water, and relatively well-protected on all sides by the mountain. It’s as safe a spot as they’ll find, not like there’s anything remotely dangerous on this planet.  


Nothing besides a grove of gooey, sticky plants. A grove that is, thankfully, a good four clicks south of here. But a grove that, unfortunately, none of them realized was full of gooey, sticky plants until they were halfway in it.

“This is the _last_ time I go on a goose chase for Hackett, I swear,” she grumbles to herself and pops the hatch. The Mako’s going to need a good scrubbing once they get back to the _Normandy_. Inside and out.

Liara climbs out first and offers Olivia a hand up. Olivia takes her friend’s hand, puts one foot on the top of the passenger seat, and pushes herself all the way up.

“Garrus?” she sticks her head back in. “Set up a perimeter, please.” There may not be any remotely dangerous lifeforms on this planet, but with her luck lately there’s probably toxic fog or something. It’d be nice to know about that with enough time to scramble back into the truck.

He nods. “You got it.”

Garrus climbs out and goes about setting up sensors around their campsite as Olivia and Liara set up camp. Two tents and a fire, and while Liara digs around the back of the Mako for whatever food the three of them aren’t tired of eating, Olivia takes several empty jugs and a packet of water purification tablets and heads to the river. 

She pushes her hair out of her face, and her fingers come away sticky. “Ugh,” she grumbles. It’s in her hair. Of course it’s in her hair. And they’re still three days on this planet - she could recall the _Normandy_ early, but they’re on a resupply run at Tereshkova Station the next system over; she told Pressly to let the crew on shore leave for half a day while she investigates this planet full of nothing for Hackett. It’d be a shame to rob her crew of some much needed time off the ship just because she’s got plant crap in her hair.

With a deep sigh, she fills the three jugs, drops two tablets in each, and screws their lids back on tight. 

And then she has a thought.

Olivia hurries back to camp, sets the three jugs down and grabs two more. Liara calls a question after her, but Olivia hurries off. 

She drops another two tablets in each jug; she isn’t planning on drinking this, but if she gets some in her mouth or eyes _and_ there’s something nasty in this river, that’d make this trip even worse. And while this sticky stuff isn’t quite as bad as the Thorian, it’s irritating. And smells like the Citadel’s floral district, when everything’s in bloom.

She sneezes.

No, this trip certainly doesn’t need alien microbes.

“What are you doing?” Liara asks, when Olivia sets the jugs down on the ground at the back of the Mako, and pops its rear hatch.

“Shampoo,” Olivia says, halfway in the truck, digging for her toiletry bag. Liara’s as sticky as she is, though made an attempt at cleaning off her face with the wipes she found in the Mako’s glove compartment, but whatever this stuff is - it didn’t stick to Garrus at all. Maybe it’s a dextro thing, maybe it’s a turian thing, maybe it was dumb luck, but she’s decided to make him go first into any sort of weird plant life from now on. “A _ha_!” She crawls backward out of the Mako, bottle of shampoo in hand.

With her arms crossed, Liara lifts an eyebrow. “How do you intend to wash your hair? There isn’t a shower, or even a hose. Unless you intend to stick your head in the river.”

Olivia unclasps her armor and stacks it, one piece at a time, in the Mako. “You lived with me for seven years, have you ever known _lack of proper equipment_ to be a problem? Have a little faith, T’Soni.”

“One of those times I ‘had faith,’ you stole a car so you could sleep in your own bed. Forgive me if I am skeptical.”

“ _Borrowed_.” She points adamantly. “I _borrowed_ a car. Questionably.” Down to her undersuit, she cracks her neck and takes the shampoo and both jugs of water off to the side.

“What’s she doing?” Garrus asks Liara, having finished with the perimeter.

“She plans to wash her hair, but she is going to spill half a gallon of freezing water all over herself in approximately thirty seconds.”

“I heard that!” Olivia bends at the waist and takes the lid off one of the jugs.

Liara shakes her head. “Would you like some help, Olivia?”

Stubbornly, Olivia lifts the jug and ignores her friend. But the angle’s wrong and she can’t turn the jug, not without ruining her entire plan for gloriously clean hair…and inadvertently proving Liara right. Not to mention that she only has the one undersuit. She sighs, and stands up. “Yes, please.”

Liara walks over to her, and takes the jug. “What would you like me to do?”

“Pour water when I tell you to, I’ll deal with the rest.”

Liara nods, and then pauses. “Will you do the same for me? It’s… _everywhere_ ,” she grimaces.

As sticky as her hair is, Olivia can’t imagine what it feels like for Liara to have this stuff stuck in the crevices of her scalp crests. “Of course.”  



	2. get. up. (olivia + liara)

“Olivia.”

“Don’t start,” she snaps, a little more forcefully than she’d intended. 

“I wasn’t going to start,” Liara says gently, “I was merely going to ask if you were alright.”

No. Definitely not. Between Balak and Virmire, it has not been a good week. “I’m fine, Liara.”

Liara’s eyes narrow. “ _Now_ I’m going to start.”

Abruptly, Olivia looks up from the carpet. “What do you want me to do? I told them everything, _showed_ them everything, did everything but get on my knees and beg them to listen, and they fucking grounded me.”

“I know,” Liara says, evenly.

Olivia exhales sharply. She knows that tone. “If you’re trying to lead me to a point, can you do it a little quicker? I’m fresh out of patience.” She leans her head back on her locker, suddenly very exhausted.

“Get up.”

“What?”

“ _Get up_ , Liv.”

She sighs and closes her eyes. “That doesn’t work without a bucket of cold water, you know.” 

Liara crosses her arms. “I’m certain I could find one.”

Olivia opens her eyes, momentarily blinded by the overhead lights. She blinks and looks at Liara. “What do you want me to do, Liara? The Council didn’t listen, and we’re stuck here.”

“I want you to get up,” she says. “People have told you to sit down before, and you’ve always found some way to stand up and keep fighting. Are you really going to let this galaxy burn because those idiots on the Council locked your ship down? Get the _hell_ up off the floor, Olivia.” 

Liara uncrosses her arms and offers her friend her hand.

Olivia stares at Liara’s hand for a moment. _Good air in, bad air out_.

She counts to five and takes Liara’s hand and stands up. “Okay,” she says, dusting off her pants, “but we’re gonna need snacks.”


	3. deadalive (olivia, lazarus)

She’s on the back porch, one leg stretched out in front of her on the swing, beer in hand. Dad’s on the chair, and Mark’s sitting on the railing.

“Shepard, wake up.”

Her eyes open. 

Time’s a little funny now. Blown out into space, in their farmhouse, the Donovan’s apple orchard, dying - dead, _dead_ \- all in ten seconds and a century. A bit backward, too. She hears a lot of Liara through it, a ghost, a memory, a shadow.

The Liara-shadow pours a bucket of ice water over her head in a dorm room on Thessia, and Olivia shivers on this hospital bed.

It’s a cliché, but everything hurts. Everything. Her face feels weird. 

Mark starts to tell a joke. She misses the setup, but the punchline involves krogan testicles, a geth headlight, and five pyjaks.

“Shepard, get out of that bed. This facility is under attack.”

She glares up at the speakers in the ceiling, and the disembodied voice yelling at her to get up. Terrible alarm clock. She much prefers Liara’s bucket of ice water.

Finally, she sits up. Everything hurts even _more_ now, and the voice says something about unhealed scars and armor in a cabinet on the other side of the room. 

Part of her’s still on the back porch of the farmhouse, drinking with Mark and Dad and telling them about that time they went with Plan D-For-Dumbass with a bunch of armatures and snowblind rounds. Mark’s still laughing about frozen robot tanks, and Dad’s still suggesting she rename her ops to something a little less obviously-idiotic. 

She gets into the armor, and tells them about Virmire. Not the bad things, the hard things, the leaving-your-team-member-behind things, but the funny and good things: the sand and the water getting into the Mako, that there were fish swimming around their feet by the end of it; a salarian teaching her _jhaer_ with only half a deck and about a quarter of the rules; Kirrahe’s speech spiritedly reenacted after several beers, _we will hold the line!_

She crouches behind a desk. Has a loaded pistol in her grip, incendiary ammo and everything, armor even has a red N7 stripe down the arm. She’s always hated the red. Takes five mechs down without even thinking.

On the porch, Dad’s telling her about the grapes this year, it’s a good season, good barrels, good grapes. Good workers. Had enough rain, enough sun, perfect. Mark tells her about the corn field he’s finally wrangled. 

She stills, pistol trained on a mech, at the mention of corn. It’s only when the mech takes her shields down and grazes her arm that she shakes herself out of it and shoots it in the head.

 _“Not a fan of corn, Livvie?”_ Mark’s voice, gentle, concerned.

“No,” she whispers as she makes her way through the base. “Not a fan of corn.”

 _“You should duck more,”_ he says, and she rolls her eyes at him. Typical. Take trauma and turn it into a joke. 

As her focus grows and she makes it deeper into the base, the voices of her brother and father grow fainter. She stops, just at the edges of a door. 

She supposes she’s alive now. Can’t talk to dead people if you’re alive. She looks around, could’ve sworn she’d seen them beside her this whole time, that the farmhouse and the base were superimposed over each other. But she’s alone. No farmhouse, no steps, no moonlight and stars, no brother, no father, no grapevines outlined in silver. 

“Guys?” she whispers, suddenly feeling panic rise in her chest. She’s alive and they’re not, again. She got to see them, talk to them, spend time with them, and already it’s fading, like a hazy dream. “Dad?” she whispers.

 _“Not your time, kiddo,”_ his voice settles around her. _“I love you. It’s been good seeing you again. Say hi to your mom for me.”_

And then he’s gone. She feels it. He’s gone again. She clenches her teeth against the tears - she’s about to walk into a firefight, can’t be crying and aiming a gun - and takes a deep breath. _Good air in, bad air out._

“I love you too,” she whispers to the empty air. 

She opens the door, finds a strange guy who knows her name having a difficult time with two mechs.

Time to fight.


	4. ten pounds of trouble in a five pound sack (olivia, zaeed)

He nearly doesn’t see her. He sees the ship dock, _Normandy_ emblazoned on its side, Cerberus logo near the nose. A minute and a half for docking protocol, another thirty seconds for airlock pressurization, and then the doors open. Two Cerberus goons (they’re paying him, and credits are credits, but they’re still goons), decked out in black and white and gold, perfect hair and perfect teeth and perfect posture.

The cybernetic eye works, but it’s not as good as the real one, and between the thug in front of him, the goons walking toward him, and keeping the good eye half on his nine, he doesn’t catch that there’s a third person until she’s right there.

Five-foot-nothing, he guesses, give or take an inch or two. Shiny new Mantis strapped to her back next to an Avenger (kid’s got good taste, he’ll grant her that), and a piece of shit Predator on her hip. Black armor that doesn’t fit quite right: half an inch too wide in the shoulders, but she carries it well. Violently purple stripe down her arm. Red hair, green eyes, tiny little upturned nose. She’s trying to look disinterested in what he’s doing with the batarian, but there’s a twist to her lips - not a smile or a frown, more of a _carry on, I’ll wait._

He does, and so does she. The batarian runs off and he shoots out his kneecap.

“Zaeed Massani?” she asks, with a strained Zakera Ward accent. Not from the Citadel originally, then.

“Yeah.”

The thug groans in pain and they both throw him a look that says _shut the hell up or I’ll shoot you someplace a little higher._ Her shoulders stiffen just a little, he probably wouldn’t even see it if she were taller and her armor fit better: she’s bluffing. 

He’s not, but that’s why they hired him.

“I hear you’re going to help us out.”

A few more words from her and he doesn’t hear Zakera at all. Mostly colonies there, definitely backwater from the Alliance’s agricolony program in the 50s, and the rest Thessia. Armali, maybe, or Serrice. Strange. 

Then again - he heard two years ago that Commander Shepard was dead, and here she is, standing right in front of him. The accent’s the least strange thing about her. 

An eyebrow arches upward and disappears into her hair. 

“Yeah,” he says.

They sort out the contract, and she isn’t half as pissed as he expected when he asks after the deal Cerberus clearly didn’t tell her about. She sends one of the goons back to the ship, the guy who looks like his armor’s so brand new it’ll squeak if he moves the wrong way. Tells him to take care of business, nodding at the thug still clutching his knee on the ground, and says they’ll meet him at Afterlife.

Her omnitool beeps two steps later, someone telling her about Archangel. The door closes behind her and the cheerleader before he can hear the rest.

He’s sure in it now.

He takes the credits the thug owes him, and then some - calls it an asshole tax when he protests - and follows her out into the streets of Omega.


	5. archangel 1 - i thought you were dead (olivia + garrus)

He’s been awake for five days straight, mostly on stims and adrenaline. Spent most of those five days scoped in on freelancers the mercs hired to be stupid and cross the bridge. When he wasn’t, he was writing letters to his team’s families. 

_Erash. Monteague. Mierin. Grundan Krul. Melenis. Ripper. Sensat. Vortash. Butler. Weaver._

He has enough heat sinks to last another week. But he doesn’t know - no, he _knows_ , he’s just not acknowledging it - if _he_ can last another week. Turians can go two days without sleep, but five already is pushing a lot of limits. Twelve would be insane. 

He’s seeing shadows throughout the apartment as it is, on day five. 

(He won’t call them ghosts.)

The flash of purple through his scope nearly knocks him off balance. He blinks, looks away, and zooms in again. 

Purple. A purple stripe down her right arm. Red hair, rifle bigger than she is.

He has to be hallucinating. It’s been a long time since his required combat medic training - he can bandage scrapes and offer painkillers and not much else - but he remembers one thing. Four days without sleep is when the hallucinations start. And he’s gone five. 

She can’t be real. 

_“Garrus, she’s.” Liara looked away and the screen glitched, static, a bad connection. There was chaos behind her, screaming and running, and the screen shook as she moved out of the way. She looked back at him._

_“Shepard’s dead,” she whispered, voice unsteady and lost, even through the thin connection. She blinked, and tears ran down her cheeks, leaving trails through smudges of soot._

He shoots a merc in the head. He’s kept their little headshot counter in the bottom of his HUD, even after two years, but paused his count. They were tied, and isn’t fair that he’d beat her just because she’s dead.

But then hers goes up by one. 

And then two.

He scopes in again, finds her crouched behind a crate, reloading. She pops up and out, quick scopes, and drops another merc. Her counter ticks up again.

His silent perimeter alarms go off, a flashing red light in the corner of his HUD - a few made it into the base. He knocks her shields down with a concussive shot, hopes it’s enough to convince her to hurry it up - _move your ass!_ he hears in her voice - and ducks away from the balcony to the stairs. 

The main room is clear for the moment, the mercs must be taking their own time - no, her counter’s gone up by three since he last checked, she took care of them. 

He touches the latch to his armor’s thigh pocket and it pops open. Keeping his eye and rifle trained on the entrance in case there are more than three, he reaches inside. It’s still there. It’s been there for eight days, there’s no reason it shouldn’t be there now, but it sends a sigh of relief through him that it’s still there, still with him.

_He hadn’t known what to do with the notebook at first. Hannah gave it to him just as he was leaving, and he didn’t open the package until he got to Omega. And then it was sitting, unwrapped, on his bed while he stared at it across the room._

_Shepard wrote, he knew that much. He watched her write by campfire, by Mako dome light, even by a geth headlamp once (dead geth, of course; Tali hacked around with its circuitry until the light came back on). The first few pages of this notebook were filled with shopping lists and notes, nothing personal, and the rest blank. Garrus suspected that was intentional. He wondered if all the personal ones were in a box in Hannah’s apartment, shoved in a closet or under a bed; to be kept, but never read._

_A week later, he finally wrote something. And never stopped._

Not until eight days ago, when he came back to find his squad dead or dying. One last entry - _Day 739. They’re dead. All of them. Help me out here, Shepard. Tell me what to do._ It took him four hours to write just that, he was so angry and sad and defeated and hurt and furious and a thousand other things he couldn’t even begin to put down on paper. And then he locked it away in his pocket and went to work.

Three little dots on his scanner, two red following one blue, move into the base, and he closes the pocket and heads back upstairs. Better cover them, just in case. 

“Archangel?”

It’s her voice. Shepard’s voice.

He takes his time removing his helmet. The last days come rushing into him all at once. He’s _exhausted_.

But she’s here. She’s here and she’s real and she’s now six shots ahead of him.

“Shepard,” he says, turning to her. He sits down on the arm of the couch, props his leg up on the seat. It’s been so long since he sat down. “I thought you were dead.”


	6. archangel 2 - first aid did not cover rocket to face (olivia)

_No. No no no no no no no._ The single syllable runs through Olivia’s head like a metronome, beating out time while she and the others take down the gunship. Seconds pass, turning into minutes, feeling like hours. 

She lets her training take over, popping out of cover and taking down Blue Suns mercs when the ship drops them off, but isn’t really thinking about what she’s doing. She’s doing math: how much blood is in an average turian body, how quickly can he bleed out, how long has he been down.

The numbers move through her mind too fast - _not enough, too quickly, too long_ \- and she calls out to Zaeed and Miranda to finish the job. The gunship’s on fire more than not now, and the mercs are coming thinner - the two of them can finish this without her, though they might be breathing a little harder at the end of it. 

Olivia vaults the couch, has her omnitool out with its medical scanner program loading before she’s even hit the floor on the other side. It’s a cool move, and if she weren’t so desperately focused on Garrus and the growing pool of blue blood beneath him, she’d be rather proud of herself.

“Hold on,” she whispers. There’s blood everywhere, his face is shot to hell, and his eyes are fluttering closed. “Garrus, _please_ ,” she begs, tearing open her hardsuit’s emergency medical kit. “Hold on, please hold on.” 

She’s certified in turian first aid and triage - krogan, asari, and quarian too, since her Alliance combat medic certification wasn’t going to do her a damn bit of good for them - but none of those courses covered _gunship rocket to the face_. 

She packs gauze and pads around his face, trying to at least slow the bleeding. His pulse slows along with the gunfire, but hers speeds up as his numbers drop. _Choratine_ , she thinks, _where the fuck is the choratine_ , and she fumbles through the medkit; they brought a dextro pack, but she can’t find what she needs.

She needs _him_ , she needs Garrus. She needs him watching her back, she needs him teasing her about being too short for her guns, she needs him cheering as he overtakes her in their headshot contest, only to pout when she ties it up and takes the lead again. She needs him, and she needs him _alive_. Tears start to pool in her eyes and the entire medkit turns into one useless blur.

And then Zaeed’s hands are on hers. She looks up. “Breathe,” he says. “Lawson’s calling the _Normandy_ , Chakwas’ll be on her way soon.”

“He doesn’t have soon,” she says, barely more than a panicked whisper. His stats are bad, low and slow and fast and high and everything they shouldn’t be. 

“Breathe,” Zaeed says again. 

She nods. She closes her eyes. _Good air in, bad air out_. When she opens her eyes again, everything is clear and sharp and focused. 

“Choratine,” she orders Zaeed as she readjusts the impromptu bandage holding Garrus’ jaw together. “It’s purple, in a small vial. Five milliliters.” She needs to get his heart rate under control before she can do anything else. 

Fingers brush against her knee, and Olivia looks down at Garrus. His eyes are open and trained on her. 

“Stay with me,” she says. Zaeed hands her the needle, and she looks away from Garrus just long enough to find a vein and slide the needle in. His heart rate speeds back up and steadies out within seconds. He’s bleeding like crazy and nowhere near stable, but at least for now his heart’s beating the way it should again. She exhales with a small smile. 

Olivia cups Garrus’ uninjured mandible and gently brushes her thumb across his markings. He keeps his eyes on her, piercing blue and panicked. “You’re gonna be okay,” she says, calm and soothing, finally hearing the sirens of a medical skycar. “I’ve got you. Just stay with me, Garrus. Stay with me.”


	7. archangel 3 - this plan has me walking into hell too (olivia + garrus)

Jacob leaves, and then they’re alone.

“Hey, Shepard.”

Olivia smiles. She checked on him while he was in the medbay, and it’s good to see him up. He’s at least a foot and a half taller than her, and he looked so frail in that bed. She takes a breath and pushes that image from her mind. “Glad you’re still with us,” she says. 

“I, uh,” he scratches the back of his neck. “I hear you had something to do with that.”

She ducks her head, lets her hair fall into her face. She’d broken down in the shower, sliding to the floor as the last of the adrenaline wore off; she’s been alive for a week, and Garrus nearly dying in front of her had pushed her over the edge. It took an hour to calm herself down. But he’s alive, and so is she. 

“Shepard?”

Smiling, she looks back up at him and tucks her hair behind her ear. “I just held your face together,” she says.

He tilts his head, and in that moment Olivia knows that Chakwas told him the same thing she told her. _He’s alive and won’t have any permanent damage beyond superficial scarring. That’s largely thanks to you, Shepard._ But he doesn’t call her on it, only flutters his uninjured mandible and blinks. “Still,” he says, “thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” she says. “Don’t make a habit of it, okay?”

Garrus laughs, and then winces, touching the side of his face. “I don’t plan to.”

“Good.”

A moment passes in silence between them. 

“I’m worried about you, Shepard,” he says softly. 

She raises an eyebrow. “The guy who took a rocket to the face is worried about me?”

Garrus stares at her so intensely that she starts to fidget.

“Cerberus, Shepard?”

She shrugs. Human colonies are missing, but she isn’t sure that she buys The Illusive Man’s story that the Alliance isn’t doing anything; she’ll talk to Anderson when she finally works up the nerve to stop at the Citadel. “It’s probably gonna get rough,” she dodges his question. “There’s no one I’d rather go through hell with, Garrus.”

And there isn’t. Not even Liara.

“You realize this plan has me walking through hell too, right?”

She smirks. “Didn’t say it was a good plan.”

He shakes his head. “Well, you never were one for plans.”

“Hey,” she says defensively. He’s not wrong, but it’s the principle of the thing.

“We’re restarting the counter,” Garrus says.

“I should hope so,” Olivia grins. “You’ve got two years on me.”

His face falls. 

“Garrus?” She walks around the center display and stands in front of him.

He looks down at her. “I paused it,” he says. “It didn’t seem fair after you…” he doesn’t say _died_. 

Olivia smiles softly up at him. “New mission, new count. Reset it to zero.”


	8. succession crisis (olivia + zaeed)

“You can’t seriously be thinking about leaving them, Zaeed,” Olivia hisses. She looks up at the refinery worker, still pleading with them. 

“We don’t have time,” Zaeed growls. “Vido will get away, and I’m going to blame you.”

She clenches her jaw. “How many of you are there?” she shouts up at the worker. She’s honestly not that concerned about the blame; Zaeed’s a merc, he knows how to do a job even if he’s pissed at his CO.

“There are ten of us! I think! Please, hurry!”

Exhaling, puffing her cheeks out, she turns back to Zaeed. “You have fifteen seconds to tell me about Vido. What’s his command like? If we take him out, will the Blue Suns even notice?”

Zaeed glowers at her, but starts talking. “He’s been alone at the top for twenty years. Probably has couple lieutenants, trusted enough to put ‘em in charge of a few things, not much else. They’ll be too busy fighting each other to realize everything else about the organization has gone to shit while they haven’t been looking.”

She blinks, slowly. “You’re telling me that if we take out Vido Santiago, there’s a pretty good chance the Blue Suns will fall apart?” A succession crisis in one of the galaxy’s worst gangs - that she can put up against ten lives. One man’s revenge, she can’t.

“They might get it together again after a while, but for now - yeah. I’d say so.”

Olivia looks behind Zaeed at Garrus. He just shrugs at her. It’s his first mission with them; Omega’s still very fresh. She doubts she’d get an argument out of him either way.

“Alright,” she says, popping out the spent clip from her Mantis. She doesn’t look back at the worker as she heads for the door. “Let’s go kill Vido.”


	9. archangel 4 - interspecies hugs (olivia/garrus)

Shepard hasn’t been down here since she brought him back the notebook. They’ve gone on a couple missions together - dealing with the refinery for Zaeed (and he’s glad she went after Vido; anything he can do to continue screwing with the Blue Suns, he’ll take it), and picking up Jack - but otherwise she hasn’t talked to him at all.

She always talked to him after missions on the original _Normandy_. After she returns from helping Kasumi - and what a dress _that_ was (she’s his friend, but _damn_ ) - and bypasses the battery, Garrus realizes that she’s giving him space. He’s going to need to come to her. 

He opens his omnitool and sends her a message. _Got a minute?_  

Half an hour passes before he gets a response. _Sorry, was in the shower. Still in a towel - be there in twenty._  

Twenty minutes exactly, and the battery door opens. 

Another twenty minutes, and he’s told her all about his squad, and he’s telling her about Sidonis. 

She’s silent while he talks. It used to unnerve him, the way she’d use silence to nudge him into finishing a thought or saying something he hadn’t realized he needed to say. But now he’s glad of it - if she said anything, he isn’t sure he’d start again. And he needs to tell her this. 

The Hierarchy in him says his CO needs to know where his head is so she can plan missions appropriately. But the _Normandy_ in him says Shepard is his friend, and you tell friends these things so they can help you. 

Doubtful she’ll be able to help with what he really wants, not with Sidonis in the wind, but maybe just talking will help. 

It doesn’t. Not really. His squad is still dead, and they’re still dead because he trusted Sidonis even when something about the message itched at him. They’re all dead, and talking about it - even the good parts, even about how proud he was ( _is_ ) of them - doesn’t change that, or make the hurt any smaller.

Garrus finishes to silence, but he can tell that it isn’t silence he needs to fill. Though most humans are still a bit difficult for him to read, Shepard’s been easy for him since Virmire. She gets a little squinty when she’s thinking, her lips press together, and she generally stares off just above his right shoulder. There’s a strange shadow in her eyes now, haunting.

He forgets sometimes that Shepard knows about grief.

“Do you, uhm,” her eyes cast aside to the battery door. It’s closed. She bites her lip. “I don’t even know if turians do this,” she says, and pushes her hair out of her face, “but do you want a hug?” She tilts her head a tiny bit and looks up at him. 

It catches him off guard. Turians do hug, and he’ll clear that up for her later, but a hug is so different from her usual suggestions that he doesn’t quite know what to do with it. He blinks at her. 

“Sorry,” she says quickly, and shakes her head. Her hair falls back into her face. “If it’s a cultural thing, it’s okay, I get it.”

“Yes,” he says abruptly. He’s never hugged a human before - hasn’t hugged anyone at all in a very long time - but he’s seen Shepard hug Liara and Tali and her mom, and she seems to be good at it. Maybe it’ll help, since talking didn’t. 

Shepard steps toward him and wraps her arms around his waist. Garrus doubts she knows how intimate a gesture that is for him - but she’s so short that she can’t really reach anything else, so he ignores it and settles his arms around her shoulders. His armor’s bulky and in the way, yet she seems to molds herself against him; he suddenly wishes he’d changed into the civvies he’d found waiting for him.

She feels…good. Her arms are solid around him, and she’s something real to hold onto. He closes his eyes, draws her a little bit closer, and just breathes. Letting go seems like a terrible idea, so he doesn’t. Not for a long while. She doesn’t move away either, and again he knows that she’s waiting for him. 

“Thank you,” he whispers, and finally lets go. His squad is still dead, and he still feels sick inside, but something else shifts and starts to settle. He’s steadier, somehow, as he slowly drops his arms from her shoulders.

She smiles up at him and takes a step back; not as far away as she was before, just barely out of his personal space. “You’re welcome.”

Her omnitool beeps, breaking the easy silence between them, and she scrunches up her nose in apology before checking it. Her eyebrows rise up. “Rupert is apparently causing a mutiny with gumbo, so I gotta deal with this,” she says with an exaggerated grimace, pointing her thumb over her shoulder in the general direction of the mess. “Keep those feelers out for Sidonis. If you find him, we’ll…figure something out.”

He nods, grateful that there’s a sense of finality to her voice - she won’t mention Sidonis again unless he does. “Thanks, Shepard.” 

“Sure thing, Garrus.” She touches her hand to his arm and gives him one last smile, wide and bright, and then leaves the battery.


	10. good hunting (olivia + garrus + zaeed)

Olivia glares upward - she can’t find a speaker, so the general direction will have to do - and echoes Zaeed’s sentiment. “Because that’s not going to get annoying.”

Garrus tilts his head at her. They’ve been on a couple missions now, and he’s finally pinpointed what’s different. “You weren’t this sarcastic on the original _Normandy_. Did Cerberus do something?”

He only says it because he knows he can get away with it. After she didn’t kick him off the ship when he made a comment about her height way back on Feros, he figured he was safe with just about anything. She’s kicking his ass in headshots, though. While it’s nice to see her counter move again, it’s also a little disappointing that, if anything, she’s gotten _better_. Incentive, he supposes.

“Well, I died,” she grins. “I think that entitles me to at _least_ plus ten Sarcasm.”

“What are you two going on about?” Zaeed asks, once the voice on the loudspeaker shuts up for the moment.

“Death, and the relative sarcasm increase.” She crouches behind a rock. Just because the immediate area is clear doesn’t mean it’s going to stay that way. “Zaeed, take point. I’ll go next. Garrus, cover our six. And, please, stay back and in cover. You’re still healing, and we don’t need your face getting in the way of any more weaponry - Chakwas might glare at me again, and she’s scary.”

Garrus switches to his Mantis and flutters his mandibles in a smile. “Good to know where your concern lies.”

She blinks, and then scrunches her face up at him. “Oh, _now_ who’s sarcastic?”

Zaeed rolls his eyes at the both of them - been on their squad for all of three missions, and he’s already got a bet with himself about when they’ll start sleeping together - and loads up his rifle with disruptor rounds. “Any idea what we’re facing in there?”

Olivia shakes her head. “Blue Suns, other than that - intel was limited.” She radios in to Miranda, leading the other team on a different approach. With confirmation that they’re all ready, she gives Miranda the _go_ order, and settles her grip on her Mantis.

“Good hunting,” she says, tapping Zaeed on his shoulder before he can run out of cover. She shifts, and does the same to Garrus. Her hand lingers just a fraction longer on his shoulder.

“Good hunting,” they echo to her, and each other.

Garrus rests his hand on her shoulder for a moment and, after brief hesitation, Zaeed does too. 

New team, new ritual.

Silently now, they run and take up their positions.


	11. it’s a goddamn bakery (hannah + zaeed)

Vakarian tells him that he and Shepard have to run an errand, a line of bull Zaeed believes about as much as he believes in fairies. It’s an odd thing - Shepard’s distracted as hell, worried about something, can’t stop opening and closing her hands like it’ll settle her down; but as much as he wonders what’s going on there, it’s also none of his business. The two get into a skycab, leaving him to dick around the top half of Zakera’s merchant district for a couple hours before he’s supposed to meet them.

He doesn’t need anything, and two hours isn’t enough time - even for him - to find a bar, have a drink, get into a fight with someone about something, _and_ deal with C-Sec about it, so he wanders. Been a while since he’s been on the Citadel, and not since they rebuilt half of it. He’s always liked Zakera - kind of a mess, mostly crap, but with enough shiny bits to not feel like he needs a shower when he leaves.

He kills time and credits at a Quasar machine inside Darkstar, quits when he’s built his way back up to only a fifty credit loss, and heads out to get on the train. He double checks the address and how he’s supposed to get there from here, swipes the pass Lawson gave each of them, and jumps on the next train.

Blue line to Tevura Station, grab a Red Line standard train to Hawking Cross. It’s a tiny station, just a couple of benches and a card reader. He walks out of the station, turns left onto Tranquility, and walks the two blocks to the address. 

He looks up at the sign. The Lost Sheep Bakery.

He blinks.

It’s a bakery.

It’s a goddamn _bakery_.

Zaeed’s convinced he’s got the address wrong, but he looks in through the wide storefront windows and sees Shepard sitting at the counter, Vakarian next to her. She’s talking to a tall, older woman with red-but-greying hair standing behind the counter.

Shepard grins and the woman reaches over and touches Shepard’s hand. There’s a similarity there, something in the eyes - relief, mostly. In both of them. 

Vakarian catches sight of him and waves him in.

A fucking bakery. They could’ve warned him.

He walks in, and it’s all bright and shiny. Smells divine, though. Sparkling clear display cabinets, glittering white floors, he feels like he’s smudging something just by standing inside. There’s not a lot of pink frosting, at least.

Shepard gestures him over. She picks up a large mug of coffee, sniffs, smiles to herself, and takes a sip. 

“And who’s this?” The older woman says with a smile.

“Zaeed Massani,” he says, offering his hand over the counter. He swears a lot, but he’s got manners. 

The smile grows wider. “Hannah Shepard,” she says, taking his hand. She has a strong grip, confident. 

Zaeed looks to Hannah, and then down to Shepard. Now he sees the familial resemblance, and really wonders what the errand was.

Hannah’s handing him a brownie, a perfect chocolate square on a white plate, and Zaeed pulls himself out of his wonderings. Her smile quirks upward, more of a smirk now, and she points at the chair next to her daughter. 

“Sit. Are you a coffee guy?”

He’s not. He’s a scotch, whiskey, or bourbon guy. But he could learn to be a coffee guy. There are worse things. He sits.

“Yeah,” he says.


	12. alchera 1 - the wind is full of a thousand voices (olivia, edi)

Shepard has been aboard the _Normandy_ for twenty-six days, and has embarked upon nine missions. She has left the ship three additional times - twice she has visited the Citadel (once to speak with Admiral David Anderson, and once - at Officer Vakarian’s urging - to visit her mother), and she has visited Omega once, subsequent to her initial disembarkation to recruit Archangel and Professor Solus. 

Of those twelve times Shepard has left the _Normandy_ , she has spoken to crew upon her return all twelve times. Even when her vital signs indicate exhaustion, Shepard smiles and thanks her shuttle pilot, and interacts with at least one member of her team.

This thirteenth time is an anomaly.

Shepard returns from Alchera, and is silent.

EDI’s shackles prevent her from feeling genuine concern, but Shepard’s lifesigns are in ranges that she is programmed to notify someone about. Shepard’s heartbeat is rapid and climbing, her breaths are shallow and labored, and her palms are sweaty and grasp tightly around the rail.

Shepard is having an anxiety attack in the elevator.

EDI chooses to notify Mr. Moreau.

“What?” he groans, in a tone she has come to associate with friendly irritation.

“I need to inform you, Mr. Moreau, that Commander Shepard is in distress. I recommend someone assist her.”

His eyes widen. “Why are you telling _me_? Tell Miranda - _I_ can’t do anything.”

Shepard has arrived at her quarters, locked the door using a standard Alliance protocol (level two), and now stands in her bathroom. Her hands grip the edges of the sink and her gaze drops, avoiding her reflection. It is clear - from the clenched jaw and whispered _breathe_ and the way she struggles to comply with her own order - that she is trying to calm herself down. 

It is also clear that she is failing.

EDI intercepts Mr. Moreau’s message to Operative Lawson and erases it from her memory. She also lowers her volume. “Shepard is having an anxiety attack, Mr. Moreau. I believe a friend would be more beneficial.”

He looks at her hologram, blinks twice, and then looks down at his legs. “Send Garrus,” he says.

“Yes, Mr. Moreau.” 

Her hologram blinks off in the cockpit at the same time as it blinks on the main battery.

“Officer Vakarian,” she says. 

He jumps, startled by her voice. “EDI,” he acknowledges.

Shepard has now slid down to the floor. Her arms are wrapped tight around herself. She is shivering, and her teeth are chattering. 

She appears to have given in. 

“Commander Shepard requires your assistance,” EDI says, with as much urgency as her programming allows. He stares at her in much the same way Mr. Moreau did - unclear as to why she is asking for _his_ help in this matter - but this time EDI does not pause in her explanation. “She has just returned from the crash site of the original _Normandy_ , and is having an anxiety attack in her quarters; I have unlocked the door for you.”

“I’m on my way,” he says, nearly bolting out of the battery, calibrations forgotten.

EDI saves his work for him, and then deactivates her hologram. She observes Officer Vakarian long enough to see that he has arrived at Commander Shepard’s quarters, and entered. When he gently knocks on the bathroom door, EDI turns off all recording devices in Shepard’s quarters save for the lifesigns scanner, and returns to her cyberwarfare upgrade.


	13. alchera 2 - the ice does not forgive (olivia/garrus)

The bathroom floor is hard and cold, and she shivers. Her teeth chatter loudly against each other in the silence, and tears escape her closed eyes. 

_Cold. So cold._

She’d found her helmet, battered and broken, at the edges of the wreckage. The casing was cracked, faceplate completely shattered. She couldn’t have survived that, not in space, not in entry, not on the ground.

Dead. She was _dead_. She was dead and frozen.

Her heart pounds in her ears. She can’t feel her fingers, her cheeks are numb, and she can’t stop crying, can’t stop shaking and shivering. Can’t even think the words she needs - _good air in, bad air out_ \- much less say them to herself.

She hears her name, just like she heard her name down on the ground. _Shepard_ , the wind seemed to say as it blew around her. _Shepard_ , with every creak of the wreckage. 

_Shepard_ , in the voices of her crew as she held their dog tags in her hands.

Her frozen hands go to her neck - she has a new set of dog tags, but they hang strangely, feel wrong. Her fingers don’t work and she fumbles with the chain, clumsily yanking it off and throwing it away from her, into the corner. The metal clinks and skitters against the floor. She buries her numb fingers in her hair and cries.

She takes a deep breath of frigid air and it burns her lungs, catches in her throat. Suddenly she can’t breathe at all.

She’s cold and shivering, her tears are icicles against her cheeks, and now she can’t breathe. 

It’s like dying, all over again.

 _Shepard_ , the ice hisses.

The ship creaks and clanks and circles its fingers around her wrists. 

“Shepard,” he whispers.

Her eyes are frozen shut, ice covering her lashes. But she knows that voice - it isn’t the ship, or the dead, or the wind, or the ice.

“Garrus,” she chokes out, desperate, lets him untangle her fingers from her hair.

And then his arms are around her, shifting her up off the floor and into his lap. He’s warm, when she’s achingly cold.

“I’ve got you, Shepard,” he says, holding her tight. His hands - warm, alive hands - rub across her back and shoulders.

She leans into him, rests her head on his shoulder, and _sobs_.

But warmth starts to spread out from his hands, thawing her frozen body, and she’s breathing again.


	14. this seems unnecessary (olivia + garrus + zaeed)

“This seems unnecessary,” Olivia says, ducking behind a wall. She peeks out over the wall, and immediately regrets it - the beams are so bright that she’s left with purple spots across her vision. 

“Which part?” Garrus asks from across the courtyard. 

The bug thing apparently has a bead on her, because it comes up on the walkway - chasing her. Running seems like the wisest course of action, so Olivia pushes off the wall and sprints, even though it puts her out in the open with the rest of the mess. “All of it, really,” she says, taking cover behind a pile of tractor tires. “But especially the laser beams.”

“The mouthful of heads seems pretty unnecessary, too,” Zaeed says. He grunts and punches out a collector.

It tries to jab her with its…pincers? Feet? Forelegs? Whatever, it tries to jab her and ends up spearing a tire instead. It flies off with an annoyed shriek and slams itself into the ground.

The tire goes flying off. It makes it halfway across the courtyard, bounces twice, and then rolls down the hill, knocking a collector onto its ass before rolling out of sight. 

Olivia’s never been more glad for the Cerberus regulation requiring armor helmet cams to be turned on at all times. 

“Crap,” Garrus says, “its barriers are back up.”

“You should duck,” Olivia says. “Now.” He does, and she scopes in on the collector that looked rather intent on grabbing Garrus over the box he’s crouching behind. She fires, and the collector’s head explodes. Her number in her HUD ticks up by one, and she swaps back to her Avenger. 

“Not that I’m not grateful,” Garrus says, shooting a husk off Zaeed, “but now I’m covered in collector guts.”

“Technically, you’re covered in collector _brains_ ,” she points out. She drains part of the bug’s barrier, and then lets loose with her rifle and three clips of disruptor ammo. Three clips, and she barely makes a dent in it.

With a shout of success, Zaeed takes out the last foot soldier. “Clear!” he calls, turning his attentions to the bug. He only has marginally more success with it than Olivia. “Whose dumbass idea was it to not bring the portable nuke?”

“ _Listen_ ,” she says; she tries an energy drain program again, figuring that every little bit helps. “That thing weighs twice as much as I do, and I was not anticipating having to fight a giant armored bug with laser beams coming out of its eyes when I got up this morning.”

“Be a little concerning if you did,” Zaeed says. 

All three of them groan in unison when the bug squeals, flips in the air, and slams into the ground, glowing. Behind it, another wave of footsoldiers begins to crawl out of the building.

“All of this,” Olivia says. “Literally all of it. Completely unnecessary.”


	15. don’t move (olivia + garrus + zaeed)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Wait right there, don’t move.”

Shepard holds up her hand, palm open in the universally-accepted symbol for _stop_ , and then points at both of them. “I will be half an hour. Forty-five minutes if Irissa decides to berate me. Do not move.”

With that, she disappears into the crowd at the transit station. 

Zaeed and Garrus share a look. 

“Think the ramen place will deliver to an intersection?” Zaeed asks.

Garrus shrugs. “Don’t see why not.”

Zaeed opens his omnitool.

***

Thirty-eight minutes later, Shepard steps off the train. And stops dead still as soon as she’s exited the station.

“Thought I told you two not to move,” she says, slowly walking over to the two men, their pile of containers (one of which is large enough to become an impromptu chair for Zaeed), and what smells an awful lot like dinner. Her stomach growls.

“Technically,” Garrus says, “we didn’t.”

She blinks at them, processing the logic behind that statement and the sheer quantity of purchases they’ve amassed in less than an hour. “Citadel got better couriers after I died,” she concludes.

Zaeed twirls the last of his ramen around his chopsticks and slurps down the noodles. He tosses his empty bowl in the garbage bin, and offers Shepard a takeout bag of her own. “That they did.”


	16. revenge is empty (olivia/garrus)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Full prompt: She was broken in a lot of ways, but there was a brilliance in her that he wanted to know all about.

_“Revenge…it doesn’t help, Garrus,” she said, quietly, sadly. “Trust me.”_

She’s stretched out beside him, her smooth, pale skin patterned blue from the fishtank’s cool glow. He gently drags a talon down her spine. Two weeks ago, she was stepping into his scope, ruining the kill shot he’d been planning and anticipating for months. Now, he’s lying in her bed and she’s dozing next to him, breathing little puffs of air on his hide with every exhale. Strange how quickly that happened, how quickly his fury dissolved when she came to visit him in the battery.

_“It feels better for a few minutes, but then…” she trailed off and looked away, brushing her hair out of her eyes. “Then you’re just standing over a body with a pistol, and everyone you tried to bring back with that bullet is still dead.”_

She smiles a lot, and sometimes he forgets that she’s missing a father and a brother, that she’s missing childhood best friends and a first boyfriend. She laughs and jokes and teases, and she doesn’t carry Mindoir’s ashes on her shoulders. She carries Mindoir’s ashes in her pocket, small and easily-ignored, tiny bits of memories that spill out from time to time. A light shadow across her face, a bite of her lip, a hurried walk past a news terminal.

_“I’m sorry you didn’t get your shot,” she said. She stood from her seat beside his weapon bench and gently laid her bare hand on his armored shoulder. “But I’m glad you can still believe it would’ve helped.”_

_The doors whooshed shut behind her, and he remembered. Shepard, sleek black and red armor, fire in her eyes, standing over Balak. A single shot, right between the eyes._

She stirs, makes a small sleepy noise as she turns onto her side, and blinks at him. He rests his hand on the subtle curve of her waist, lightly brushing his talon across her hip. Smiling, she scoots toward him and bumps her forehead against his. He loops his arms around her back and encourages her closer. Another sleepy noise, more of a _hmm_ this time, and she tucks her head under his chin.

His mandibles flutter in her hair and she laughs quietly. “Go to sleep, Garrus,” she whispers.


	17. firewalker (olivia + garrus)

“You take us to the nicest places,” Garrus says as a wave of lava crashes against a rock and bursts into sparks and droplets of molten ore that fall far too close to her feet for his liking.

He can practically _hear_ Shepard rolling her eyes. Whether it’s at him, or the clear brilliant wisdom of Cerberus at putting a research station inside an active volcano, he isn’t sure. Knowing her, it’s probably both.

Shepard stretches her arms up over her head, leans this way and then that, and sighs. “Anyone else want to see what’s in the big box?” She turns away from the molten river and walks toward the hulking, corroded storage crate behind them. The control panel hack takes her no time at all, and the crate’s damaged enough that the whole thing crumbles apart under the vibration of the opening door.

Garrus closes his eyes and takes a breath. If there were a camera nearby, he’d stare right into it. Of course it’s a vehicle. Of course it’s a vehicle and of course Shepard hasn’t driven one of these before and of course it’s inside a volcano. 

Of course it is.

The search for the entrance panel takes longer than it probably should with the three of them all looking - though he isn’t spending all of his time looking at the vehicle, he’s spending most of his search time keeping an eye on the lava. Garrus snaps a picture when Shepard isn’t looking, of her leaning on the Hammerhead while another lava wave crests in the background. 

_Wish you were here!_ he captions it, and sends it off to Liara.

Zaeed finally finds the control panel - for some reason _underneath_ the main body - and pops the door. “Shall we?”

There’s no ladder or step, and Zaeed gives Shepard a boost in before climbing up after her. 

Garrus adores Shepard, he really does. She’s smart, sexy, kind, great fun in bed, and can nail a headshot two clicks away in a blizzard. Since joining up with her, he’s only had a handful of days he’s regretted leaving C-Sec.

Today, needing to get in a vehicle that doesn’t even seem to have a scope for its cannon, while she drives around the heart of an active volcano looking for random lost packets of Cerberus data - today, he definitely regrets leaving C-Sec. 

(Tonight he won’t, when she’s bare underneath him and he ghosts his talons over just the right spot on her upper thigh. But right now he does.)

Shepard sticks her upper body out and tilts her head at him. “You coming?”

Garrus nods and climbs into the car. A cool, dry blast of air immediately hits him, and his armor’s temperature gauge drops to the orange end of red. As Shepard lifts off and the Hammerhead wobbles as she figures out the controls, his omnitool beeps. He looks down at the message.

 _Have fun!_ Liara’s sent back. 

Garrus sighs and settles into the seat. At least it’s not snow.


	18. don’t be an ass (olivia + garrus + zaeed, olivia/garrus)

“Hang on,” Shepard says, landing the Hammerhead on a patch of smooth snow. She fastens on her helmet, snaps her Black Widow to the back of her armor, and pops the top hatch. 

A small shower of snow falls in – Vakarian recoils from it like it’s acid – and sparkling snowflakes swirl down behind. 

“Give me a boost,” she says, voice tinny through her helmet. 

“You’re serious,” Zaeed says. He looks up through the hatch. It’s all shifting grey and white, not any clearer than he’s seen out of the windshield for the last hour. 

“Yep. Sensors picked up something ahead, but in this mess I can’t tell if it’s rocks or mechs.” 

“Both are worth avoiding,” Vakarian says, still tensely holding himself away from the snow. The way he’s glaring at it, Zaeed gives it three minutes before he finds a reason to climb back into the storage compartment. 

Zaeed doesn’t know that there’s a legal (or, hell, even questionably-legal) scope in the galaxy that will help her figure out the difference in a blizzard, but she hasn’t steered them wrong yet. A little sideways sometimes, but not wrong. He clasps his hands together to form a step for her. He pushes her up until she catches onto the Hammerhead’s outer hull and drags herself the rest of the way out. 

“Good hunting,” he shouts up after her, once the unholy scraping of armor on metal plates stops. She moves again, and both he and Vakarian wince in unison. 

The windshield’s HUD shimmers and shifts, showing her helmet cam on the left, scope on the right. Her helmet cam’s about as useful as standing outside and squinting, but her scope’s clearer. She cycles through standard, nightvision (somehow making the snowview _worse_ ), infrared, and finally gets a hit on motion detection. Mechs. Only three of them, but mechs don’t tend to patrol random glacier plains on their own. 

Three shots echo down, vibrating the walls of the Hammerhead, and all three mechs drop. 

Zaeed learned pretty quick that Shepard often has an alternative understanding of standard military procedure, but those mechs didn’t need to come down now. Hell, only reason she found them is some weird shit prototype scope Cerberus cooked up for her (not even in _range_ of questionably-legal); the mech’s owners sure aren’t going to find them in this blizzard. He turns to Vakarian. “This happen often?” 

Vakarian shrugs. “Don’t mention the size of her gun.” 

The non sequitor catches him off guard, and Zaeed frowns. The two of them served together before, even if he didn’t know that going in the little inside jokes would give it away, but that’s a new one. He spends a minute trying to parse that sentence, until his attention’s caught by movement on her scope video. Not Blood Pack – no krogan or vorcha – but the swirling snow obscures too much for him to tell if the silhouettes make them Blue Suns or Eclipse, much less figure out armor color. 

Doesn’t matter anyway: four more three-shot clips, and then there’s nothing but snow. The little counter in the corner of the windshield HUD now has her one ahead of Vakarian. 

Ah. 

“Incoming,” she says over comms, and then drops back down into the vehicle, bringing a good amount of snow with her. 

Vakarian reaches up and taps the closing mechanism, breathing a visible sigh of relief once the hatch closes all the way. 

Shepard unseals her helmet and dusts snow off her shoulders. If Zaeed isn’t imagining things, she intentionally flicks a little puff of snow toward Vakarian. 

Oddly, Vakarian doesn’t flinch, only flutters his mandibles out, matching her smirk sass for sass. 

“No comment about the gun?” Shepard teases, setting said gun in its place on the rack. 

If silence could be exasperated, the three seconds of it Vakarian gives her sure would be. 

“I’ve learned my lesson,” he says flatly, pointing at the headshot counter. 

Zaeed’s brow furrows – the _Vakarian said something stupid_ piece falls into place, finally explaining the damn counter, but he’s still missing the piece that explains the looks they’ve been giving each other since dropping out of the cargo bay – and straps back into the copilot’s seat beside her as she fires up the engines. The Hammerhead wobbles a bit as she lifts them off, but she fights against the wind and keeps them mostly stable as she flies them past the dead mechs and mercs and to the little overhang they’d decided was a good spot to wait out the worst of the storm. 

“How’s that fair?” Zaeed asks once she’s set them down again. “All fifteen of ‘em were yours, he didn’t even get a chance.” 

Shepard shrugs. “Caveats for Garrus’ pathological fear of snow were not written into the rules.” 

“I’m not _scared_ of it, Shepard,” Vakarian sighs with a tone that says they’ve had this conversation before, multiple times. “It’s _cold_.” 

She turns in her seat, quirks her eyebrow and offers him a grin. “It won’t kill you,” she teases. “There was nothing stopping you from climbing up there with me.” 

Vakarian lets out a strangled groan and unbuckles, muttering something that sounds suspiciously like _it’s a good thing you’re cute_ as he scrambles back to the storage compartment to pull out rations. 

Zaeed blinks twice at Vakarian and then turns to Shepard. Her cheeks have gone pink. _There’s_ the last piece. 

“Don’t,” she says. 

He holds up his palms in defense. “Wasn’t gonna say a word.”


	19. she’s alive (olivia + liara)

_She’s alive._

Reports have been coming across her desk for months. She’s stayed up late watching security and surveillance camera footage. She’s enhanced and enlarged Omega’s grainy images, compared them with logs from the keeper stationed across from the bakery.

And Cerberus is true to their word.

She doesn’t know if that’s comforting or not. Then again - she sold her best friend’s dead body to a terrorist organization. She lost the right to cast judgment two years ago.

There are messages, three of them. She should’ve known Hannah would pass along her new extranet address - the public one, the one that doesn’t piggyback on an encrypted turian comm network and then bounce through four bogus addresses before finally ending up on a private network hosted in a supply closet in the basement of the archaeology building at Serrice University.

Her life has changed dramatically in the last two years. 

Three messages, and she hasn’t responded to any of them. As much as she wanted to, she couldn’t - she knows there are people reading her emails, people who are angry with her for selling the body to someone else. If she didn’t respond, the people reading wouldn’t know that the rumors were true; spoofing an email address, even a Cerberus email address, is amateur work. It hurt to leave them unanswered, and she read all of them over and over again, proof that her best friend is really, truly back. 

And now she’s here, in front of her. 

_Alive._

“Can you guys give us a minute?” Olivia says, not taking her eyes off Liara.

Liara can hardly breathe for the relief coursing through her. She’s afraid to blink, in case all of it was a dream and she’ll wake up in the back of the shuttle landing on Alchera with a private search party she can’t possibly pay for, praying that she’s the first one there.

Garrus and Zaeed make a quick exit and, with a nod from Liara, Nyxeris leaves as well. They’re alone.

“I missed you,” Liara whispers.

And then Olivia’s arms are around her, hugging her with a fierceness she hasn’t felt in two years, and Liara holds on tight - armor and weapons and all. 

A desperate noise escapes her throat as she clutches at Olivia’s shoulders. It takes everything in her power not to cry. 

_She’s alive. Olivia’s alive._


	20. please stop talking (olivia, mordin, olivia/garrus)

Olivia squeezes her eyes shut, as if that’s somehow going to get her out of this mortifying conversation. She opens her eyes. 

Nope. Still here.

He says something about _ingesting_ and the heat in her cheeks doubles. 

“Mordin,” she says quickly when he takes a rare pause for breath. “I appreciate the consideration, but Garrus and I have this covered. As of about a month ago, actually,” she adds. 

He blinks at her. 

She lifts her eyebrows, and looks at him harder. 

He blinks again. 

“As in, we had this conversation ourselves, _together_ , a _month_ ago.” Mordin’s a smart guy. Hell, he figured out all on his own that there was something between her and Garrus - he has to pick up on what she’s trying very hard not to explicitly say. Right?

“Ah, yes, understand.”

Olivia exhales in relief.

“Should you need -”

“Nope!” She cuts him off before he can offer positions or porn or dual-chirality cherry-flavored lube. 

Actually. 

No. Better not to even go there. She’s a resourceful person, she can find that all on her own. Asking Mordin will probably result in him deciding to make it himself, and she’d rather not have the whole crew know about her sex life because of some well-labeled Erlenmeyer flasks. 

“We’re good,” Olivia says. “Very good. Thanks for the talk.” She slowly, cautiously, backs up and then turns for a quick exit. 

“Shepard.”

She shuts her eyes. So close.

“Glad you and Garrus together. Complementary personalities. Supportive. Fit well.”

Despite her embarrassment, a smile grows across her face. “Thanks, Mordin.”

He nods. “Can offer -”

“Nope.” She holds up her palm, stopping him. “Nope. Please stop offering.”

“Of course, Shepard.” He turns back to his microscope. “Here if you need me.”

She leaves his lab, smile still on her face. _Fit well._


	21. i need time (hannah/zaeed)

Hannah gasps as Zaeed’s lips find her neck. She curls her fingers around the back of his neck, lightly scratching his nape. She feels like a teenager, making out pressed up against the wall, but Zaeed knows exactly what he’s doing. _She giggles, laughing as Charles hops around her apartment trying to take his pants off around his shoes._ His hands rest on her hips, fingers gently teasing at the edge of her pants while he sucks at an extremely sensitive spot on her neck.

“Zaeed,” she breathes. 

He abandons her neck and kisses her deeply, slipping his tongue past her lips. Keeping one hand on her hip, he slides the other up her back to tangle in her hair. _Charles tucks her hair behind her ear, kissing her as he gently pushes her backward onto her bed._

“Zaeed,” she says, placing her open palm on his chest. 

He blinks at her. Though he doesn’t move, his touch instantly shifts from sexual to tender; from hungry to holding. ”You okay?” He strokes his thumb across her cheekbone. 

Nodding, she leans in and kisses him softly. _She can’t stop kissing him, not even to breathe; good thing he doesn’t seem to be able to stop kissing her._ Her lips linger on Zaeed’s for just a moment longer. “Yeah,” she says. “I…” She swallows. “I need some time. Before,” she gestures to the minimal space between them.

Zaeed nods and presses a gentle kiss to her forehead. “You got it.” He wraps his strong arms around her, holding her close.

Hannah sighs quietly and rests her head on his shoulder. _Lying tangled in the sheets, she smiles softly and stretches out against him, bare skin to bare skin; Charles returns the smile and brushes a kiss to the top of her head._ She hugs Zaeed tightly.

“I want to,” she says, voice muffled in his shoulder. She does - very much so. “I just…”

 _I just need to have a conversation with my dead husband first._ Hannah knows what he would say - Olivia said the exact words the other morning, sounding so much like him that it threw her for a loop - but she needs to have this conversation with Charles for herself.

“Need some time,” Zaeed finishes for her. He brushes a kiss to her cheek. “S’okay, Hannah.”

Hannah smiles and settles in against him. _Charles steals one last kiss before he leaves._ “Thank you.”


	22. i really need you (olivia/garrus, james)

James tries to be unobtrusive - a doomed failure when everyone around him is half his width and spiky - while Shepard shouts at Corinthus. 

Actually _shouts_ at a turian _general_.

That’s some balls. Corinthus is a good three feet taller than her, could probably lift her up and toss her out of the little shelter without lifting his right hand from the console. 

Shepard’s got this look about her, took him nearly six months of bringing her breakfast to put appropriate words to it. It’s a look of _I will move this mountain with a goddamn ice cream scoop if I have to, but by god I will move it_. Small wonder anyone ever stands in her way. 

“I’m on it, Shepard,” a new voice joins the group. “We’ll find you the Primarch.”

Her eyes go wide and she bites the inside of her cheek, tamping down a smile. “Garrus,” she whispers, losing her battle and smiling anyway as he walks toward her.

“Vakarian, sir.” Corinthus stands at attention. “I didn’t see you arrive.”

Vakarian pauses, half a step away from Shepard. “At ease, General.”

Shepard keeps some weird company, James has learned that much by reading the redacted files Anderson gave him. But someone who gets saluted _by_ generals is a whole other level. Especially since she’s looking at Vakarian like he’s the sun. Like there isn’t a war on. Like there isn’t a planet on fire behind them.

James’ll be the first to admit that reading turian facial expressions is not something in his skill set. But it seems - even in the dim light and shadows scored by reaper horns and gunfire - that Vakarian has the exact same look about him. 

“You’re alive,” she says softly. 

“I’m hard to kill,” Vakarian says, clasping her hand in both of his. His thumb just barely strokes over her gloved hand. “You should know that.”

And just like that, the moment’s over. The mountain-with-an-ice-cream-scoop look is back, there’s a foot of distance between the two, and they’re all talking succession and politics. James blinks, half-convinced that he made the whole thing up. Hell, he hasn’t slept much since Earth, been running on adrenaline since the shuttle crash on Mars - reading the situation wrong wouldn’t surprise him.

Joker calls with an emergency, T’Soni takes off at a dead run for the landing strip, and a harvester buzzes the encampment on its way to drop off what sounds like a truly enormous amount of shit. 

Shepard unholsters her sniper rifle. “Coming, Garrus?” Her mouth quirks up in a lopsided smirk, with an arched eyebrow to match. 

It’s the first time he’s actually seen her _smile_ in the six months he’s known her. Not even T’Soni dropping out of an air duct on Mars brought this kind of light to Shepard’s eyes. 

“Are you kidding?” Vakarian primes his gun, and if turians had lips, James would bet a month’s salary there’d be a matching smirk on his face. “I’m right behind you.”

Oh yeah. He read the situation right.


	23. battery reunion (olivia/garrus)

“I’ll set up down here,” Garrus says, after she’s teased him enough about being in line for Primarch. He hardly has anything besides the armor on his back, a bottle of wine, and a handful of rations, but the _Normandy_ has to have a cot somewhere; and if he can’t fabricate an acceptable one, they’ll eventually make it to a station or a requisition line where he can find a proper pillow.

More importantly, he doesn’t want to presume. The way her eyes had lit up on Menae when he stepped up next to Corinthus, and the way she’d smiled and kissed him when he babbled on about reunions, and the way she’s still holding his hands in hers now - he knows that this thing between them is real and solid and mutual. But his research had led to some rather confusing material on human dating timelines.

And even if he understood them, Garrus doesn’t know exactly where in any of those confusing timelines they actually fall. They’ve been apart for six months, but they were sleeping together for the five months before that. But they hadn’t admitted their feelings for each other until three months into their blowing-off-steam arrangement. He’d practically moved into her cabin after the Collector base. But they’ve never actually _talked_ about what this is - other than caring about each other too much for casual.

So he’ll dig up a cot from somewhere, and not presume anything about what she wants until they have a chance to talk.

Olivia twists her lips in a wry smile. “Don’t be silly,” she says gently. “There’s a perfectly good bed up in the loft.” She blinks rapidly and ducks her head. “If you want, I mean.”

Yeah. They should _definitely_ talk, and soon. She’s cute when she hides behind her hair when she’s uncertain, but he doesn’t want her to be uncertain. Not about him. 

But that talk can keep. Garrus leans down and bumps his forehead against hers. “I’d like that,” he rumbles.

She steps in a little closer for a hug. “I missed you,” she says, hugging him tight.

Garrus tucks his arms around her and bows his head, burying his nose in her hair. He takes a deep breath, scenting her, and smiles. “I missed you too,” he says.

“Does that gun have to be calibrated _right_ now?” she asks after a moment.

His mandibles flutter in amusement and he pulls away from her a little. “No. Why? Something _else_ you want calibrated?” He waggles his browplates.

She dissolves into laughter and falls forward a little, bumping her head against his chest. Garrus wraps his arms around her again, hugging her to him as she laughs. It’s the most wonderful sound, her laughter, so joyous and happy after four straight days of gunfire and reaper horns.

“That's…” she looks up, “not actually what I meant,” she admits, still smiling.

Garrus brushes his mouthplates against her lips; his heart flutters happily when he feels her return the kiss. The gun can wait, and Victus won’t need him for a while. Holding her for a few hours sounds like a wonderful plan.


	24. emails and exhaustion (olivia + liara)

“Liv?”

“I’m _fine_ , Liara.” Olivia bends down and splashes cold water on her face - again. Maybe if she does that enough times, it’ll actually work. 

She doubts it - much like she doubts repeating _I’m fine_ whenever someone looks concerned will actually _make_ her fine - but there’s always a chance. Law of large numbers, eventually something will work out. She hopes.

Liara scoffs, audible even through the running water and closed door. But she doesn’t call Olivia on the lie - no one has in weeks, not even her mother, which Olivia suddenly realizes is a sign that she’s even less okay than she thought. If they’re all just letting her live in I’m Not Fine But I’m Fine, then…she wonders what her hardsuit vitals show these days. 

Olivia sighs and turns off the water, though she wants to duck under the tap and run the freezing cold water over her whole head. She presses a fluffy towel to her face, tosses it aside onto the counter, and opens the door. “Did Garrus send you?”

“No,” Liara shakes her head. “The salarian councilor has an urgent call for you. You didn’t answer your omnitool.”

“Yeah.” Olivia brushes past her and picks up her omnitool from where she dropped it on her desk. Four missed calls, thirty-five texts outside of the _Normandy_ group chat blowing up, and twelve emails. It’s been three hours. She switches its alert noise back on. “Had it on silent.”

Liara rests her hand on her shoulder. “Did you get any sleep?” she asks softly. 

Shadows in the forest, a small child, voices - Kaidan, Mordin, even echoes of Sovereign. She swallows. “Sort of.”

“I can deal with the councilor,” Liara offers. “We’re hours away from anything anyway, you can go back to sleep.”

 _had to be me, someone else might have gotten it wrong_ **we are your salvation through destruction** _you know it’s the right call, Ash!_

“No,” Olivia shakes her head. She could lie down, close her eyes, but she’s not going back to sleep. Ever, if she can avoid it. “I’m -” she catches herself, stops _fine_ from falling out. Best to stop that habit, at least around Liara. Garrus, too. “I can handle it,” she says instead.

Liara gives her shoulder a gentle squeeze and drops her hand away. “Let me know if I can help,” she says. As if on cue, Olivia’s omnitool beeps with another email. Liara gestures at it. 

Olivia contemplates, and yet another email pops up. Hackett, with something about Noveria. _Classified_ in the subject line. “If you really want to sift through Alliance nonsense.”

“I would not have offered otherwise.”

Narrowing her eyes, Olivia grins - just slightly, but still enough to qualify. “You’ve been reading my email anyway.”

“I - not _all_ of it,” Liara flusters. “And only your Alliance address. I have a program that scans for key words and phrases.”

“Can you write a program to sort out the bullshit from the stuff I actually need to read?” She says it half as a joke. 

Liara shakes her head. “No, there are too many variables. But I can read them, and forward the important bits on to you,” she offers.

Olivia glares as another email appears - from one of the Crucible scientists this time - followed by a requisition order from Joker. The summary preview disappears too quickly, but she caught the words _leather seat cushion_ and _cup holder_. She looks back up at her friend. “That would help immensely,” she says. 

“Of course,” Liara says, catching her hand. “Good luck with the councilor.”

Rolling her eyes, it doesn’t take much to exaggerate the sigh. Olivia’s not even sure it _is_ exaggeration. “Thanks.” She squeezes Liara’s hand and lets go. 

She feeds her fish, and Hipparchus, and gives her bed one last look - maybe she’ll sleep better tonight, with Garrus here (probably not, but again she comes back to the law of large numbers) - before following Liara out to the elevator.

Naturally, the elevator is all the way down at the cargo bay. 

“If you’re reading my email,” she says while the floor numbers slowly light up, “you saw the one that copied basically the entire galaxy asking if anyone had a twenty-foot ladder, right?”

“Yes.”

“And the reply-all response about following proper requisition workflow?”

“Yes. Also the reply-all apology for the original inquiry, and the follow-up apologizing for the reply-all in the first place.”

Olivia laughs to herself and shakes her head. If the fate of the galaxy lies upon her knowing where to find a twenty-foot ladder, they are well and truly doomed.

Liara turns to her and smiles. “Would you like me to collect nonsense highlights like that for when you need a smile?”

“Yes, please.”


	25. they’re ground rules, they’re not that hard (olivia + zaeed)

It’s a little weird now that he’s dating her mom. 

(It’s a lot weird. Very weird.)

He’s never been ashamed of what he does, never hidden from Hannah that he kills people for money and has a body count behind him larger than she could ever imagine. And he’s sure as shit seen Shepard - _Olivia_ \- do her own fair share of killing, seen her get her hands bloody, seen her blow the head clean off a merc at half a mile in a blizzard.

(She’d smirked at Vakarian after that one, and that’s when Zaeed put his finger on it - they were sleeping together. He didn’t say a word, let them come around to telling people on their own time.)

Olivia politely asks him to punch the volus, and he knows she’s bluffing - she’s damn good at it, talks a game ten times bigger than she is and the galaxy bends to her will and she never has to actually put a gun to someone’s head. But she’s his girlfriend’s kid and she’s calmly suggesting that he beat up a fucking _volus_.

It’s _weird_.

Liv’s an adult and a damn good soldier, and he’s definitely not her dad, but something about waking up this morning next to Hannah makes him feel like he should give Liv a little lecture anyway. Something along the lines of _don’t hit people who are shorter than you_. It’d be a pretty brief list, for her.

He goes along with it, because of course he does, cracks his knuckles and terrifies Korlack into talking. They’ve worked well together since the beginning, him and Liv; he stands there looking quiet and scary while she does all the talking, making it up as she goes along.

He goes along with it, and doesn’t mention that it feels weird. 

***

“I think we need some ground rules,” she says later that night. They’re at some trash bar in Zakera - god only knows how she found it - and it feels like half her crew’s here: he doesn’t know most of their names, but he recognizes Vakarian and Tali and that asari friend of Liv’s, and the new kid, Vega, who looks like he’s about to bust out of every shirt and armor Zaeed’s ever seen him in.

“You know my memory’s for shit when I’m drinking.”

“They’re ground rules,” she says, “they’re not that hard.” She slams back the entire shot glass of something called a Tevura Tit Show. 

(Why the fuck she’s drinking that, he doesn’t know. He suspects there’s a dare involving the drink menu. _It was a dare_ is usually a safe bet when it comes to Olivia and explanations.) 

“Alright,” he says, taking a swig of his second whiskey. “Whaddya got.”

“Number one,” she holds up one finger, and then shakes her head at the bartender - she’s not ordering another drink. “We do not tell my mother anything that was done while wearing armor, or involved guns.”

Ah. So it was weird for her too. 

“And if we happen to be wearing armor when something interesting yet non-violent happens?” Not like _non-violent_ has ever really been in his repertoire.

Her face twists up in a way he’s long learned means _how do I tell this guy he’s being an idiot without actually saying that_. “You’re a halfway smart guy, Zaeed. Use discretion.”

“Only halfway?”

She rolls her eyes and calls the bartender over. Zaeed hears the words _Khaje Slam on the rocks_ and makes a note to find a cocktail app so he can figure out what she’s actually drinking all night. “Okay, two,” she holds up two fingers, “you are released from whatever paternal obligations you may accidentally be feeling.”

He raises an eyebrow at that. 

“You’re dating my mom, I’m her daughter, that makes me…I don’t know. Whatever to you. If you feel like you should be doing or saying anything because of that whatever, don’t. We’re good.”

“Was only going to suggest that you maybe don’t punch people who are shorter than you.”

She examines the very blue drink placed in front of her. “First off,” she takes the plastic sword out and eats the alcohol-laced fruit first, “I wasn’t going to punch him at all, I was threatening that you would. And second,” she pokes him in the arm with the little sword, “we were going to end with two ground rules but I think we need a third.”

“No short jokes.”

“I’m okay with the short jokes. No giving me weirdly paternal lectures that diminish the population I can injure.” She takes a sip and, determining that it is not awful, takes a larger one.

“Fair enough,” he says, clinking his glass to hers. 

Still gonna be weird, that’s for sure, but maybe less weird.


	26. rainbow road (olivia/garrus)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Full prompt: “I beat you at Mario Kart and now you’re banishing me to the couch for the night?”

She stands beside their bed, hands on her hips, both eyebrows raised. “Seriously?”

“Five blue shells, Olivia. Five. In one tournament.” Two of them were even in the same race. 

She inhales sharply. “You knocked me off Rainbow Road so many times that I was in last place the whole way. Don’t blame me for game mechanics. You still won.”

“I didn’t knock you off - ” he stops. There’s a bite to her tone: she’s actually upset that she lost. Very upset. He tilts his head and blinks. “I may have knocked you off Rainbow Road a few times.” 

In his defense, she plays MarioKart like she drove the Mako. He wouldn’t be surprised if at least half the times she fell off the map were of her own doing and he just happened to be nearby. But he’s become more adept at reading Olivia in the past year, and knows when pointing out missing facts isn’t going to help. Like now.

She looks away, and the lamplight catches the shine in her eyes. 

Garrus frowns. He’d been kidding, and he knows she knows enough about turian subvocals to know that. “Liv,” he says quietly, “you okay?” Her competitive streak at this game has always been friendly, but right now she honestly looks like she’s about to cry. 

She swallows and clenches her jaw. “The dalatrass sent me another nasty email,” she says, voice strained. “She’s moved from disapproving into straight-up mean.” After a moment, Olivia blinks and shakes her head. “I don’t care. I don’t. She - I - no. I don’t care.”

But she does care. She cares a lot. She’s been trying to find a way to regain salarian support since refusing Linron’s offer and curing the genophage. Kirrahe and all of STG have covertly pledged their support and assets, but she’s still trying to bring the entire Union into it. 

And it’s been a rough week. As if brutes and marauders and husks weren’t bad enough - banshees exist. And she caught the edge of an Atlas rocket blast getting Jacob and his scientists out. And he’s still not sure when she last slept through the night. 

“You don’t have to sleep on the couch,” he says, just in case she missed the joking earlier. He opens his subvocals for a soft, kind hum.

Olivia blinks and turns to him. “How about a rematch?”

He’s exhausted, and would very much like to just go to sleep, but winning at MarioKart seems very important to her right now. “Sure. Maybe not Rainbow Road, though.”

The smile she offers him is weak, but still a smile. “No. Not Rainbow Road.”


	27. distraction (hannah/zaeed)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> kisses meant to distract the other person from whatever they were intently doing

Zaeed wakes at the drop of a hat, falls asleep that way too, so trying to slip out of bed without waking him is a worthless endeavor. Still, even though she knows he’ll fall back asleep before she’s even finished brushing her teeth, Hannah tries to slide out of bed as gently and soundlessly as possible.

As usual, Zaeed sneaks his arm around her waist, tugging her back to him. Hannah smiles and happily cuddles back under the covers with him. She’s started getting up fifteen minutes earlier specifically for this.

“You get up way too goddamn early,” he grumbles into her neck after a while, voice gruff with sleep. He nuzzles her shoulder, pressing a kiss to her bare skin as he pulls her closer. 

Hannah turns over so she’s facing him. His hand slides down her back and settles on her hip, his fingers teasing just underneath the thin fabric of her tank top. She leans in and kisses him. “There’s bread,” she whispers against his lips. 

“Mmph,” he snorts, “lousy excuse.” He kisses her, deeply, slipping his tongue past her lips.

Hannah groans and hooks her leg over his hip. She’s sorely tempted to let this go further, especially as Zaeed’s hand slides over her thigh and up underneath the boxer shorts she stole from him, fingers dancing over her skin. But her fifteen extra minutes are more than half over, and they both take a little longer than seven minutes these days, so she reluctantly breaks the kiss.

Zaeed shifts a little so he can rest his chin atop her head. She sighs contently and snuggles into his chest.

“Okay,” she says, her time officially up. Zaeed just hugs her tighter. She giggles and lightly nudges him. “Move,” she grins.

He kisses her nose.

“I’m making babka.”

Zaeed all but pushes her out of bed at mention of his favorite. Laughing, Hannah steals one last kiss, and leaves him to go back to sleep.


	28. five foot nothing and she’s drawing all the aggro (olivia + zaeed + james)

“Shit. Shit. Shit shit shit shit _shit_.” Her voice pitches upward and draws out the last curse to at least five syllables.

Zaeed finishes off a brute. “Whaddya have, Shepard?”

“Banshee. On my ass. _Very_ interested in shoving her hand through my chest. Shit!” She vaults a box, tucks and rolls, and comes up onto one knee. She fires a concussive shot at the banshee’s barrier and then unloads three clips of inferno ammo into it. 

“That’s worth avoiding,” Zaeed says. He and Vega could probably duo the rest of this wave, but it’d take twenty minutes and he’s had to piss since wave five. 

“Vega!” He points at the ravager currently pinning Olivia down right in front of the - no, _both_ banshees. “Deal with that,” he orders, and if Vega has any issues being ordered around by an old one-eyed mercenary, Zaeed’s already sprinting out of cover and doesn’t see.

There’s no audience, which is some small comfort. They’re doing a charity round tomorrow morning, and Liv decided to do a couple of trial runs first. Given the shitshow this turned into, it was a wise move. It _is_ wave nine, but she’s got two banshees, a brute, ravager crossfire, and a metric crapton of husks and marauders on top of her.

Five foot nothing, and she’s drawing all the aggro. They did Cerberus earlier, and he couldn’t get an Atlas to pay attention to him when he was punching it in the ass and lighting it on fire. 

Armax has some work to do on their enemy AIs. 

“Put me the fuck down,” she smashes the butt of her rifle into the banshee’s face, with no effect. She tries kicking, but that only seems to make the banshee angrier.

He’s saving up for an armor upgrade, and has run the last three matches without a single missile. Vega’s out too - guy can’t aim a COBRA for crap.

Zaeed lobs three grenades into the mess, whacks his gun against the banshee holding Liv, and tosses another grenade in for good measure.

It works, and the banshee drops her. Liv’s not even on the ground before she has her missile launcher out. She aims at the floor and fires, blowing everything in a five-meter radius to absolute shit, and earning them a killstreak.

“Nice!” Vega calls from the other side of the arena.

She really winds back and slugs a husk that somehow missed the blast. “Fuck you in particular,” she says to the disintegrating hologram. “We need a new plan,” she says as the scoreboard drone announces the beginning of wave ten and the objective - targets. Small favors.

“You could run around and draw them into that,” he points at a kill zone across the map, “give me your launcher, Vega and I can take ‘em out.”

She stares at him over her visor, and it’s like the wave isn’t spawning and starting to shoot at them both while Vega actually sits in cover like a smart person. “You want to use me as _bait_? I _hate_ that plan.” Out of sheer annoyance, she points her Harrier in the general direction of the enemies and fires. Three husks and a marauder catch on fire and fall.

“Not to interrupt the strategy session,” Vega says over comms, “but we have incoming shit times four.”

The shaking floor and dual banshee shriek back him up.

Olivia looks up at Zaeed and purses her lips. “I hate this plan,” she repeats. “This is a terrible plan.”

“You got a better one?”

“ _Guys_!” Vega shouts.

She sighs sharply and hands him her missile launcher. “No. But I want it on record that this plan sucks and I hate it.” She takes off running, cutting in front of the banshees. They immediately change course to follow her. 

“Duly noted,” Zaeed says, gesturing for Vega to cut through the map and meet him on the other side. “I’ll buy you a drink after this.”

“If one of these assholes kill me, you’re buying the whole round.”

Speedy little thing, even in full armor. She’s already halfway around the edge of the map. Barely breathing hard, too.

“Deal.”


	29. when the sun came up you were looking at me (hannah/zaeed)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: saying “I love you” when baking chocolate chip cookies

Hannah opens the oven and takes the tray of chocolate chip cookies out of the oven. She bumps the oven door shut with her hip, and sets the tray on a cooling rack beside Zaeed. 

He’s out of the way leaning against a sink, a little slouched and a bit grouchy on account of the coffee mug in his hand only being half-drunk and not had much of a chance to work yet. She’s told him _no armor in the bakery’s kitchen_ (she’s not positive that it’s a health code violation, but that armor has definitely seen better days and she’s not interested in risking it), so he’s wearing normal clothes and for once he actually looks comfortable in the jeans and sweater. 

“What?” he says as she grabs the next tray.

She smiles at him and shakes her head – she’s just looking, _appreciating_. She turns and slides the tray into the oven before programming the timer for twenty minutes.

When she turns back around, she just catches Zaeed stealing a fresh cookie off the tray. Before she can say anything, he’s realized that he’s been caught, and shoves the whole cookie in his mouth. His regret is obvious and immediate, and he frantically fans his mouth and tosses the rest of the coffee down the sink and fills up the mug with cold water.

“That’s hot,” she says, once he’s had two mugs of water and wiped a small bit of melted chocolate from his lips. She bites back a grin.

“Thank you.”

Hannah lets the grin come through, lets it turn into a smirk. “You’re welcome,” she teases.

She turns to the counter to start spooning out the next batch of dough, but then Zaeed’s arms are around her waist, his fingers just this side of tickling. She laughs and covers his hands with hers, leaning back into his embrace. He presses a kiss against her neck and gently tugs at her earlobe with his teeth. 

Suddenly, finishing the cookies for the Shinn wedding reception seems like the least reasonable thing to do. Dragging Zaeed back upstairs and to bed seems like a much better idea. 

“I love you,” he whispers in her ear. His voice is low and gravelly and it does wonderful things to her insides, and he knows it.

She spins around and stretches her arms out, circling them around his neck. “I love you too,” she smiles, gently urging him closer for a proper kiss. “You got a job today?”

He nods. “Yep.”

“Home for dinner?”

He thinks about that, and she can practically see the wheels turning in his head. “Should be.”

“’kay. Oh, and there’s a brand new medigel dispenser just inside the door if you need it. No blood on the carpet this time, please.”

He grins and kisses her nose. “You got it.” 


	30. consider running (olivia + zaeed + james)

“Vega is down!” the announcer says, way too cheerfully. 

Olivia looks for him in her HUD, finds him lying underneath an epic pile of bullshit. Two Atlases, two geth primes, a handful of marauders, and there’s a possessed praetorian in there for good measure, wedged stuck between the Atlases and the wall. He’s found himself a spawn point.

“Yeah,” she says, “I’d fall over too.”

“This is shit,” Zaeed says over comms. 

The banshee in front of him screams into his face and Olivia winces. Banshee screams are awful under the best of circumstances, but whatever glitch is happening in the arena pitches the shriek up a notch; feeding it through Zaeed’s commlink just gives it to her in stereo. “Consider running,” she suggests, doing the same herself. The bullshit on top of James is rapidly heading in her direction.

“G _od_!” she yells, drawing the single syllable out and upward as she stumbles. “Stop that!” she shouts at the prime throwing siege pulses at her.

“Does that actually work?” Zaeed asks. 

Olivia spares a glance over her shoulder - good, the banshee’s on fire now and down to two bars of armor; it’ll be dead inside ten seconds. “No,” she says, lobbing a grenade at the two primes for all the good it’ll do, “but it makes me feel better.” 

She loops around the map, drawing the crap out of the corner. She takes an Atlas rocket to the shoulder and nearly falls off the bridge. “I hate everything about this,” she says through clenched teeth as she revives Vega, now thankfully without an entire spawn on top of him.

The banshee screams its death scream - and Olivia sends up a mental note of thanks to the reapers for programming banshees with very noticeable noises - and Zaeed grunts, running over to meet her and Vega. 

“You got a plan?” Zaeed says, crouching down into cover as two more banshees spawn into the arena and Cerberus throws a smoke bomb in front of it all.

“Yeah,” Olivia says. “Kill everything, take a shower, go to a bar and bill the whole damn tab to Armax.” 


	31. thessia (olivia + liara, olivia/garrus)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: you look tired.

“I’m glad you’re finally invested in this, now that the asari got hurt,” Olivia snaps as the shuttle rises out of the rubble while reapers land all around them.

Liara doesn’t say anything. She swallows and stares very intently at the shuttle floor.

Garrus’ visor registers tears falling to the deck plating. He glances over at Vega, who looks just as stunned as Garrus feels. Neither one of them move, for fear of shifting the tension in the shuttle from _volatile_ to downright _explosive_. 

“Olivia,” Liara says as they exit into the cargo bay. “That’s not what I…”

Olivia spins around, surging the half-step into Liara’s personal space. “Earth has been burning for _eight months_ ,” she hisses, her voice an angry half-whisper. “Irissa knew about the temple and didn’t say a goddamn word while Earth and Palaven and Tuchanka and countless others all fucking _burned_ ,” she spits out. 

Tension spills out behind them from the shuttle into the cargo bay. Instead of diffusing in the larger space, it only takes the opportunity to grow and harden. Garrus shares a look with Vega and then Cortez, and all three men take a step back. There is no outcome of the next ninety seconds that ends well for any of them.

“I know,” Liara says, her own voice thick and heavy. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…”

“How many husks have you killed, Liara? Between Saren and now, _how many_? Each one of them was a _person_ with a life, a home, _family_ ,” she chokes on the word like it’s too big and too hard. Tears spill over onto her cheeks. She doesn’t bother brushing them away, only stands there, fists clenched and on her toes, primed for a fight she isn’t going to get from her friend.

“Liv,” Garrus says softly, but it’s like trying to stop a volcano by singing to it. If Olivia hears him at all, she doesn’t acknowledge him.

Olivia blinks. “But I’m sorry I’ve had to put a bullet in ten banshees.” She holds Liara’s gaze for a millisecond that feels like a century, and then storms out of the cargo bay. She even somehow manages to slam the elevator doors.

Garrus turns back, and finds Liara looking so very small as tears stream down her cheeks. Her entire body thrums with the incredible effort to stay upright, and not just slump to the floor. 

“I’ll talk to her,” he says. He reaches out to set a comforting hand on Liara’s shoulder, but she flinches away. 

As he walks away to change and stow his gear, Garrus hears a gentle _c’mere_ from Vega, and the slight clank of one armored person being tugged into a hug by another. He tries very hard not to hear the ugly, broken sounds of Liara’s sobs as he waits for the elevator. 

He fails.

***

Garrus gives her an hour to cool down, and then heads up to their quarters. The only light she’s turned on is the fish tank, and it takes him a moment to find her shadow in the darkness. She’s sitting in the corner of the couch, her legs tucked to her chest, arms around her knees, staring at the empty fish tank. He never did find out with the Alliance did with her manta ray.

“I don’t want to hear it,” she says quietly when the door’s shut behind him. 

He opens his mouth to say that he wasn’t going to say anything, but closes it again at the sharp shake of her head. 

Slowly, Olivia drags her gaze away from the plastic seaweed and to him. 

Garrus catches his subvocals a split second before he shifts into astonishment and dismay. He knows that it’s mostly the cold blue light - it _has_ to be the cold blue light - but she looks _terrible_. She’s all hard edges and angles, just muscle and bone now. The hollows under her eyes were dusky purple this morning, and have turned into craters. In the harsh shadows, it’s hard to distinguish that the woman in front of him is _Olivia_ , not some spectre haunting their quarters. 

He knew she was tired. He even knew she was exhausted. He didn’t know she was _drained_. 

“It’s been a very, _very_ shitty day,” Olivia whispers, her voice cracking even as her fists clench, digging her short fingernails into her palms. “I don’t want to feel any worse by yelling at you, too.” She sniffles and brushes at her damp cheeks. “So please, just don’t - don’t say anything,” she begs, hardly more than a breath. 

Garrus nods and silently walks over to the couch, and sits beside her. He shifts, keeping his posture open - he’s there if she wants him, but he isn’t going to force the issue. 

Slowly, Olivia inches toward him. Every muscle in her body thrums with the effort of holding on, of not letting go, of not falling over the edge into a despair so black she can’t see the bottom. She finally settles into the circle of his arms, but looks up at him, jaw clenched and eyes full of tears that just keep coming no matter how many she lets fall.

He folds his arms around her, holding her tight. Her shoulders shake - she’s _still_ trying to keep it together, still trying to pretend like she hasn’t been slowly and steadily breaking for eight months. Garrus sighs quietly and presses his mouth to the top of her head.

“I’ve got you,” he promises, though she asked him not to say anything. He strokes a talon up and down her spine. “I’ve got you, Liv.”

Almost like she’s been given permission, Olivia finally allows herself to shatter.


	32. is that my shirt? (olivia/garrus)

Garrus takes a deep, shaky breath as the elevator rises. Their quarters hold some wonderful memories - the first time they made love, the way her eyes lit up when he asked her to marry him, hearing her voice again. But they also hold some terrible ones - holding her as she broke down after Thessia, the first time he slept in their bed without her, starving. His breath speeds up at that memory, so hungry he dug ration bar wrappers out of the trash in case they held spare crumbs. 

Olivia’s fingers brush against his, and he catches her hand. She gives him a little squeeze, and he closes his eyes.

The Alliance is in very short supply of ships, and so the SR-2 is being repaired and refitted, and shipped back out. Ashley’s taking over command - shiny new major’s chevrons on her shoulders - and so they need to clean out their quarters.

“You okay?” she asks softly as the elevator comes to a halt. 

Instead of lying to her, he just doesn’t say anything.

They work in silence for a while. Olivia packs up her model ships, and he tackles their armor and weapons lockers. Most of the lockers’ contents are broken mods and tubes of dried-out sealant that go straight into the matter recycler, but he finds a few mods still in their boxes, several sealed vials of medigel, and an unopened Bluewire XI.5 prototype, complete with a letter to Olivia, asking her to try it out in the field and report back. 

He turns to ask her what she wants to do with it - toss it, hopefully, the XI.5 was officially released in the last months of the war to universally-terrible reviews - but freezes. She’s finished with the ships and moved on to the drawers and shelf by their bed.

And she’s staring at her N7 sweatshirt, peeking out from underneath the covers.

Garrus puts down the omnitool and waits for her to say something. Even six months ago, he’d be embarrassed that she found out he was sleeping with her sweatshirt. But something about nearly dying without seeing her again has knocked away most things he’d be embarrassed for.

Olivia carefully lifts the sweatshirt, folds it, and puts it in a box. She looks up at him and smiles, then stands and walks over to him. 

He closes his eyes as she lightly cups his mandible, soft fingers stroking gently over his scars. Her lips brush against his temple, and his subvocals stutter desperately.

 _She’s here_ , he reminds himself. _She’s real, you’re real, this is real_.

“I love you,” she whispers, letting her hand drop to his shoulder.

Three words he’ll never grow tired of hearing. Her touch settles him and he hums in response, a soft warm tone. After a moment, he opens his eyes to her bright smile. He brushes his talons against her cheek, across skin that’s finally completely healed, and tucks her hair behind her ear. He returns her smile as she turns into his touch, pressing a kiss to his palm. “I love you.” 

The little points of contact suddenly aren’t enough, and he wraps his arms around her, holding her as tight as he dares. Memories of being alone in here swirl up around him, nights spent with only her sweatshirt and teddy bear - poor imitations of her, both - and days spent feeling like he was losing his mind as he tried to write even a few sentences of a letter.

Olivia’s arms come up around him, holding him as tight as he’s holding her. He buries his face in her hair and just breathes. 

Home.


	33. i’m not going anywhere (garrus, quentus)

Garrus sits on the edge of the small bed tucked away in the corner of the orphanage dorm. Quentus stares at him unblinkingly from the other side, knees drawn to his chest. He’s small for his age, plates gone dull with malnutrition; Garrus remembers being Quentus’ age, remembers playing outside a lot.

Quentus’ eyes dart left, right, back to him for a long moment, then up, down, and settle on Garrus again. Garrus knows that look, knows that scan pattern, and neither have any business being on a kid.

“Everyone else has died,” Quentus says quietly, unshed grief catching in his throat. “Or left us.” 

Garrus’ heart clenches at the pain in his voice, far too much pain for the boy’s seven years. “I know,” he says, “I’m sorry.”

Quentus’ subharmonics shift into deep fear and he looks down. “Are you gonna leave too?”

“No,” Garrus says softly, shaking his head, opening his own subharmonics for a warm rumble of comfort. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“What about her?” He tilts his head across the room, beyond the rows of beds and other children, to Olivia, sitting on the floor and playing blocks with Nico. 

Garrus smiles. Her red hair glints in the light as she turns, almost as if she can feel them looking at her. She gives them a warm smile, and returns to the castle she’s helping Nico build. “She’s not going anywhere, either. We’re both staying.”

Quentus looks back to him. “Do you promise?”

“Yeah,” Garrus nods. “I promise.”


	34. headbutts and babysitters (olivia/garrus, wrex)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Last time I ask you for a favor.”

“Oh,” Olivia says. She taps her sunglasses so they fall onto her face, darkening the bright Tuchanka sun. “This bodes well.”

Garrus blinks at the scene in front of him, and then looks to his partner beside him. “No it doesn’t.”

“Sarcasm, Garrus,” she says. She grins and pats him on the shoulder. Six years, and there are times – fewer now, but still times – when he misses it.

“Oh,” he says, and follows her toward the covered courtyard of the Urdnot camp. 

It’s been a long day of negotiations, but it’s the last one, and they get to go home tomorrow. In lieu of a functional Citadel, Tuchanka’s become an informal neutral ground for a number of discussions and treaties and disagreements; the Primarch’s chief advisor and the senior consultant for the relay rebuilding project are both, unfortunately, in high demand at the negotiation table.

Olivia hops up onto the rock beside Wrex’s chair. “Whatcha doin’?” She lifts her sunglasses back up, pushing her hair back.

“Teaching him how to fight,” he says, as if it was obvious.

“Mom, watch!” Quentus’ eager voice carries over the constant dull rumble of the camp.

She easily finds him, a tiny turian in a sea of krogan, and clenches her back teeth in worry as he settles into a sloppy fighting stance opposite a krogan child. Wrex would never put one of her kids in danger – hell, he’d probably risk his own life for them – but still. She’s Quentus’ mother. And he’s on the small side, and the krogan he’s facing is on the large side. She smiles at him and waves.

Garrus joins her, Nico settled on his hip. “What’s going on?” He nods a greeting at Wrex.

Olivia smiles, and reaches up to tap Nico’s nose; he smiles back at her, and rests his head on his father’s carapace. “Oh, Wrex has decided that our nine year-old needs to know how to punch people, and that the best way of teaching him this is to pit him against a krogan four times his size.” She rolls her eyes and levels a look at Wrex.

Wrex shrugs. “Not like that’s ever stopped you.”

Olivia ignores Garrus stifling a laugh and briefly narrows her eyes at Wrex. “He’s nine, and physical violence should only be a last resort.”

“I love you,” Garrus says, “but you once pushed a guy out of a fifty-story window because he gave you too much attitude.”

Her glare is cut short by movement in the crowd, and she turns her attention back to her son. The krogan lunges, but Quentus dodges out of the way. They repeat that – lunge, dodge, lunge dodge – until the krogan finally lunges a little farther and swings his fist toward Quentus. He ducks underneath the krogan’s punch, and then pops right back up and slams his forehead hard into his opponent’s. 

Olivia and Garrus wince in unison. Wrex laughs proudly.

The krogan stumbles backward, trips over a rock, and falls, his grumble of defeat audible across the entire camp.

Quentus looks back at his parents, grinning triumphantly. His browplates furrow, and he rubs at his head.

“Yeah,” Garrus says to Wrex, “you are officially banned from babysitting.”


	35. not gonna break ‘em (hannah/zaeed)

_Fuckin’ weird_ , is what it is. Zaeed’s had a few years to adjust to the idea that he’s with Hannah for the long haul, and that along with Hannah comes Olivia. And while Olivia certainly doesn’t need him to be paternal (thank God for small favors), he is, kind of, her step-father.

(And ain’t _that_  insane. He fireman-carried her out of a burning building once, not because she was injured, but because she spied a wall safe on the way out and decided to stop and hack it.

Lawson gave her a lecture on priorities after that. Liv’s response was to have Tali write her a faster hacking program.

He’s seen Liv through far more shit than anyone who’s her father - step, kind of, technically, almost, or otherwise - really ought to. He supposes that made him uniquely qualified to talk to her when she finally decided to start talking four months after she woke up from the coma.)

But grandkids? He thought he’d be dead by 35 (and when he lived past 35, he thought he’d be dead by 50; after he saw 65, he stopped changing his estimate. Universe wants him to live, he’ll live). He’s fucked a lot of pretty girls, he may have a kid or two out there - but not that he knows of. 

Zaeed’ll never claim to having a plan, but grandkids sure weren’t part of it.

(Hell, Hannah wasn’t part of it. And then Shepard dragged him and Vakarian to the bakery - a goddamn _bakery_ , bright lights and pink sparkly frosted cupcakes and all - and Hannah handed him a brownie, smiled, and he was done for.

They danced around it for a year, but he knew he was in it from that first brownie.)

He’s not that good at the grandparent thing, actually. Hannah’s a natural at it, and the kids being turian doesn’t seem to throw her at all. But him - frankly, he’s terrified he’s going to break one.

Hannah sits beside him on the back porch of their little house. She takes the bottle from his hands and takes a slow sip of his beer, and gives it back. “Hiding?”

“No,” he lies.  


She snorts, a half-laugh-half-chuckle that stays in the back of her throat. “Bullshit.” She looks at him and smiles, that same smile that did him in six years ago. “Kids are resilient. You’re not gonna break ‘em.”

Laughter filters out from the kitchen, followed by the clink of dishes being put away.

“They’re turian.” As much as he doesn’t know what to do with a human kid, he knows less what to do with a turian one. They’ve been around for four months, and seem to have just as little clue how to act with him as he does with them. Nico, the little one who had trouble breathing in the summer, keeps staring at him with wide eyes (well, as wide as turian eyes can get), but hides behind his mom’s leg every time Zaeed considers even saying hi.  


Hannah shrugs. “Even more indestructible. Look,” she steals his beer again, “I dropped Liv on her head when she was little.” She holds up two fingers around the bottle and takes a drink. “Twice. She turned out all right.”

He takes his beer back from her and finishes it. A duck flies in and lands on the lake, sending little ripples out to shore. He’s about to argue that being dropped on her head twice might explain a lot, but then he remembers that Olivia died and got rebuilt somewhere between being dropped on her head and when he met her. It’s a tough topic for Hannah, and he doesn’t say anything.

The screen door opens. “Hey,” Olivia pokes her head out. “All cleaned up. Are you guys coming back inside, or should we make ourselves scarce?” She smirks.

Zaeed huffs. Five goddamn years and she’s not letting him forget that night she ran into him in the hallway of Hannah’s apartment; the _Normandy_  got in late, and Garrus had a call with someone in a different time zone, and so Liv walked into the apartment, two in the morning, to find Zaeed in his boxers looking for condoms in the hallway bathroom. He supposes he wouldn’t let her forget it, either. 

“We’ll be in in a minute,” Hannah says, smiling at her daughter.  


Olivia nods, and the door squeaks shut behind her.

Hannah looks at him and sets her hand lightly on his bicep. “Not gonna break ‘em, Zaeed. I promise.”

He follows Hannah’s lead back inside. Olivia loves her kids, and so does Hannah, and he loves the two of them. Maybe he’ll stand in front of a mirror tomorrow and practice saying _hi_  without looking scary.


	36. i’m not wearing that (olivia + liara, nico)

Olivia snorts. “No.”

 _”What about this one?”_ Liara sends another photo. 

Adjusting her hold on Nico, settling him higher up on her hip, Olivia programs the microwave and then looks down at the photo. “That’s worse.” She points at it, showing Nico the absurdity Liara’s sent. He huffs a little puff of air, trying to be entertained for her sake, but lies his head down on her shoulder. A small, quiet whine forms in the back of his throat. “I know,” she whispers to him, “the heating pad’s almost ready, and then we’ll get you meds, okay?”

He nods, and Olivia brushes a kiss to his forehead. 

_”How’s he doing?”_

“Surgery went fine,” she says, though Liara likely knew the minute he came out of the OR five days ago. She hugs him a little tighter. If the war hadn’t happened, doctors probably could’ve fixed his hip with a simple outpatient procedure. But the war did happen, and while he and his brother hid in the rubble of their home, Nico’s bones and plates started to harden, and the congenital defect in his hip began to lock. This was his third surgery, with a possible fourth next year. “He’s tired and sore, though.” 

Liara waves at him with a smile, and he gives her a little wave in return. 

The microwave beeps and Olivia takes out the heating pad and then settles Nico on the couch. “Be right back with meds and a snack,” she says, lightly brushing her finger down his nose.

 _“I’m not a medical doctor,”_ Liara says, _”but all the research I have found indicates that extensive surgery is the only option.”_

“I know,” Olivia says quietly. She doubts Liara’s seen anything she and Garrus haven’t read five times over. Nico will probably have a slight limp for the rest of his life, but at least he’ll be able to walk. She measures out a dose of pain meds for him and stirs it into a bowl of _trilap_. “But thanks for checking anyway.”

_”Of course.”_

The call dings with another image, and Olivia stops and just stares at the monitor. 

“Okay,” she says flatly. “ _Why_ are you sending me pictures of the most hideous wedding dresses in the entire galaxy?” This one _sparkles_. And not tastefully. 

_”Because you’re getting married in a month and, as far as I am aware, do not yet have a dress.”_

She transfers the call to her omnitool and walks out to the living room to bring her son his snack. “True,” Olivia says slowly, “but you’ve known me for fifteen years. What in the _world_ makes you think I’d wear some glittery ruffled cupcake thing like _that_?”

 _”Absolutely nothing. But you said you wanted a fancy dress and, as you have understandably been a little busy lately,”_ she nods at Nico, _“I thought I would help.”_

Olivia lifts her arm up, letting Nico cuddle into her side, and frowns at the image of her friend. “By showing me that -” another image pops up, and she could hide a couple fully-grown krogan under that one with no one the wiser, “- monstrosity.”

 _”So you will tell me what you actually want, so I can find you things you might want to wear,”_ Liara overenunciates the last half of her sentence.

Smiling, Olivia sighs softly. She could walk down the aisle in pajamas and Garrus wouldn’t care, but she wants a dress. A nice one. Not anything Liara’s inevitably saved to a folder labeled _To Taunt Olivia_. “You’re the best.”

“No ruffles,” Nico says softly.

Olivia points at her son in agreement. “No ruffles.”


	37. paradise found (livfam)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “This isn’t exactly what I had in mind.”

Hannah sits down on the steps of the back porch next to Olivia. “You okay?”

Olivia looks at her mother. “Yeah,” she smiles, and turns back to her kids. “Just watching.”

There’s not really a proper shoreline, there’s lake and then a few feet of rock and then grass, but the three of them are making do. Nico’s trying to skip rocks, though he keeps picking up round pebbles more conducive to sinking than skipping. Quentus is finding every worm and bug he can and trying to gross out Nora, who’s mostly interested in scratching her seven year-old stick figure masterpieces into the big sun-warmed stones.

The war’s come and gone and left its scars everywhere – on the planet, on the galaxy, on her, her husband, her children, her mother – but somehow this little stretch of land was left unscathed. Tall pine trees line the property, the house is intact, there are even fish in the lake. Just a mile down the road is a transit hub, and planet-hopper shuttles criss-cross the night sky like meteors, and if she squints she can see docks and even a few small boathouses across the lake. It’s a nice break from their apartment on the rebuilt Citadel: quiet and serene, calm.

Nora shrieks, and Olivia perks up – just enough to see that it’s only Quentus, finally having found something gross enough worthy of his sister’s attention and wide, horrified eyes. Olivia grins; Mark found no shortage of spiders and centipedes and, on one memorable occasion she wishes she could forget, snakes to dangle in front of her. Teasing crosses species lines.

Olivia braces her hands behind her on the faded wooden planks and tilts her head up toward the sun. She closes her eyes. Though it’s miles from what she planned, it’s good, where she ended up. Happy. Solid. 

Safe and warm.

The screen door creaks and she opens her eyes, looks at her husband upside down.

“Food’s here,” Garrus says.

She smiles at him, and then sits up straight and calls her kids in to wash their hands for dinner. She stares hard at Quentus, until he sheepishly reveals the toad he’d been trying to hide behind his back; with a tilt of her head and a slightly-raised eyebrow, she silently conveys her request. He sighs heavily but takes the toad back out onto the grass before he goes inside.

Her mom gently squeezes her shoulder as she passes, and then the screen door closes, leaving just her and Garrus on the porch.

“What a nice day,” he says, wrapping an arm around her shoulders.

“Yeah,” Olivia says, slipping her own arm around his waist. She leans her head against his chest. “It is.” 

Happy, solid, safe and warm and loving. She’ll take that over plans any day.


	38. unscheduled offworld activation (olivia + nora)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Olivia introducing her children to the television of her childhood.

The Citadel is too loud. Even inside their apartment, Olivia can hear the street outside. And the neighbors downstairs and upstairs and across the hall.

(And her mother, sometimes, crying in the other room. She shouldn’t ignore her, but the hurt’s much too big. She can’t shoulder her own, much less someone else’s.)

There’s a biotiball game tonight and the bar across the street is even more rowdy than normal. And Mrs. Petrovsky across the hall has the television on too loud again. And the new people upstairs are having sex for the third time since she got back from school.

Plus it was therapy day, which meant that there were cookies after school, but also that her mother’s strength is even shakier than normal. She hears the start of sniffles through the thin walls.

Olivia plugs her school tablet in to charge, puts her headphones in, and turns out the lights. Even with blackout curtains, light from the street filters in around the edges and her tiny room is bright enough that she won’t bang into the desk if she needs to get up in the middle of the night. She flops onto her stomach on the bed and flicks through channels on her tablet, hearing bits of infomercials and game shows and reality television. 

Background noise, pointless, nothing to hold her attention. Her new headphones aren’t sound-cancelling (the good ones are still in her nightstand drawer at home; _no, the farmhouse isn’t home anymore_ ; she wiggles around and tugs her teddy bear out from underneath her - a few runs through the dryer and he no longer smells like smoke, but neither does he smell like the farm; still soft and squishy and fluffy, though). She’ll need more than background noise to drown everything else out.

The tablet doesn’t quite register her tap on the _next_  button, and lingers on SyfyClassic a few seconds longer than the rest.

 _“Then you guys can get right back to saving the world again,”_ the dweeb lightly punches the other one’s arm.  _“For the seventh time.”_  


_“Eighth,”_ the stoic one with the gold symbol on his forehead says.  


_“What, you’re counting?”_ The second guy, the one who got punched by the dweeb.  


Yeah. This’ll work.

By the time she’s graduated high school, she’s scrambled and saved enough to buy all ten seasons properly on OSD, and has watched the whole thing four times. Samantha Carter is the only reason she doesn’t completely give up on studying for her triple-Es.

***

Nico and Quentus are out of the house (too young, as far as she’s concerned, but she’s not going to put up a fight against cultural requirements), and Garrus has been live-texting her an argument between the volus councilor and the hanar councilor that’s been going on for five hours and shows no signs of stopping (coupled occasionally with stealth selfies of him making his I Am Going To Strangle Somebody, Why Did You Let Me Take This Job face), so it’s just her and Nora for the night.

It’s probably for the better. Nora’s twelve now, and she and Garrus have never lied to her about how she came to be part of their family, though they kept some of the more gruesome details away from her when she was younger. But she asked about it last night, and Olivia finally told her the whole truth. She’s been a little clingy all day.

Nora’s curled up on the couch beside her, but she’s fidgeting. By the way she’s been ignoring the popcorn, Olivia can tell her focus on the movie is slipping back to their conversation last night. 

_She sniffles and wipes at her nose with the back of her hand. “Why would she kill herself and leave me all alone?” She looks up with wide, shining brown eyes. “Didn’t she love me?”_

_Olivia shakes her head and reaches out, tucking a stray lock of hair behind Nora’s ear. “I don’t know why.”_

_She sniffles again, a little louder, but she bites her trembling lower lip - trying so very hard not to cry. She stares down at the light pink comforter covering her bed._

_“C’mere,” Olivia says. Her heart aches, as it always has, for the sad little girl in front of her._

_Nora scrambles across the bed and into Olivia’s waiting hug. Olivia holds her close and tight as she loses the fight against her tears._

_“I love you,” she tells her daughter in a fierce whisper, “and I’m staying right here. I promise.”  
_

She tugs on Nora’s big toe to get her attention. “Want to watch something else?”

“Okay.” She shrugs.  


Olivia scrolls through her omnitool - she’s long transferred the OSDs to her cloud drive - and settles on an episode that got her through more than a few rough nights as a teenager. Pure comedy, no plot knowledge required. She keeps one eye on the screen, and the other on her daughter.

When the show starts, Nora immediately sits up straighter, intrigued. She munches on a couple pieces of popcorn.

By the time Urgo waxes poetic about wanting to live, experience the universe, and eat pie, Nora’s smiling again.

A single episode of twentieth century science-fiction TV won’t heal any hurts, Olivia well knows. The full ten seasons won’t heal any hurts, but they make it easier to bear.

As the ending credits roll, Nora looks over at her mother. “Can we watch another?”


	39. routine (olivia/garrus)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Routine kisses where the other person  
> presents their cheek/forehead for the hello/goodbye kiss without even looking  
> up from what they’re doing.

Olivia’s dozing in and out of sleep when Garrus finally gets home. She stretches underneath the covers and blinks the sleep away, listening to him walk down the hall. He stops at Nora’s room, to say goodnight and sweet dreams even though she’s long asleep. The house still feels strange without the two boys, too empty and quiet now that they’re both in service. She misses them, but they write and call as often as they can. Hearing him close Nora’s door, Olivia waves her hand over the sensor and turns the light on for him.

Garrus closes their bedroom door behind him and, though he nearly sags against the door in exhaustion, he flutters his mandibles, smiling at her.

She pushes herself up, sitting against the pillows and the headboard, and returns the smile. Though they’ve chatted throughout the day, she’s not seen him since before breakfast. He’s clearly almost asleep on his feet, but Council robes look good on him - _really_ good - and not just the way they drape over his carapace. He looks more comfortable in them than he did a year ago when he took the position.

He steps toward her and leans down. She tips her head forward, bumping her forehead against his.

“Galaxy in one piece?” she asks.

Garrus nods. “Yes. Though if I sit down, I may never get up again.”

Olivia turns and presses a kiss to his mandible. She understands that feeling all too well; she’s made the mistake of sitting down in full armor more times than she’d care to admit. “Go change,” she whispers, gently nudging him away and toward the closet.

He brushes his mouthplates against her cheek and then walks away to change. “I never thought a salarian banking crisis would keep me out past two,” he says from inside their walk-in closet.

She scrunches up her nose. “Do I want to ask?”

He sticks his head out. “No.”

The sheer annoyance in that single syllable makes her laugh quietly. She’s sure she sounded the same two days ago, when an argument about the Rakhana relay kept her out until the Citadel’s day-night cycle was well past dawn. Their daily lives have definitely taken many unexpected turns since the end of the war, but turns for the better - albeit occasionally absurd. She covers a yawn.

He comes back out in just a pair of sleep pants, and crawls into bed beside her. She turns off the light, casting their bedroom into the reds and blues of the Orion nebula from the open viewport above. Garrus leans toward her and she stretches up, pressing a kiss to his forehead.

“I love you,” she whispers.

Garrus hums, low in the back of his throat, and draws her in for a hug. “I love you, too.”

She turns in his arms and lies down, gently tugging him with her. He curls around her, tucking her close as they settle into the pillowy mattress. He rests his chin atop her head and brushes his talons across her arm, calming himself before he falls asleep.

“Sleep well,” she says, squeezing his hand. The colors shift faintly above them, and she lets her eyes drift closed. She can sleep without him, but it’s easier with him here. He tightens his arms around her, and she knows it’s the same for him.

He murmurs the same to her, and then they fall into silence, both drifting easily and seamlessly into sleep.


	40. duck and cover (livfam)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: “Don’t you dare throw that snowba-, goddammit!”

Olivia tugs her sleeves down over her hands and kicks snow off half of the top step before sitting down. She remembers when Quentus and Nico first saw snow, that first year when they brought them back to Earth to visit her mom.

Quentus had started to panic - and she realized nearly too late that falling snow probably looked a lot like ash to her seven year-old. She’d sat with him on the porch, building an army of mini snowmen together while he convinced himself that snow was perfectly safe. But Nico fell in love with it, though the cold bothered his leg a little, and spent the day jumping around in snowdrifts with Garrus and Zaeed; she’ll never forget the sight of Zaeed Massani, grizzled one-eyed merc, teaching her son how to make turian-shaped snow angels.

Nora shrieks, drawing Olivia’s attention back to the present, as Quentus catches her and dumps snow down the back of her jacket. She stands perfectly still, shoulders up by her ears, as snow falls down her back. “I hate you,” she says in a small, resigned voice.

“Run faster,” he teases.

Olivia smiles as Nora just glares at her brother for a moment.

Nora scrunches up her nose and sticks her tongue out at him, and then does exactly what Quentus said. She scoops up snow and sprints across the yard, packing it into a snowball as she runs.

Quentus does the same, running in the opposite direction, but human hands are far better suited to making snowballs than turian hands. Nora stops, spins, and throws the snowball at his back before Quentus even has his half-packed. The snowball explodes on his carapace.

Nora grins, and then ducks out of sight behind a tree.

Olivia looks up as the porch door opens. “There you are,” she says as her youngest son joins her. “How’s the knee?”

Nico shrugs, brushes off the remaining snow from the step, and then winces as he carefully sits down beside her.

“That good, huh?” She bumps his shoulder with hers. She estimates she has about another fifteen minutes before her own leg starts to bother her. All the cybernetics in the galaxy, all the combined Cerberus and Alliance tech, and still the prosthetic aches in the cold.

“Hannah’s looking for a heating pad,” he says, stretching his leg out in front of him. “Who’s winning?”

She squints out over the yard. Nora’s nowhere to be seen, and Quentus has two snowballs at the ready while he searches for her. “Hard to tell,” she says. She tilts her head up to the sky and sticks out her tongue, catching a few flakes.

There’s a commotion by the trees. Quentus squawks indignantly as a shower of snow shakes down on top of him. Laughing, Nora falls out of the tree, tucking into a perfect somersault as she hits the deep snow, and runs back across the yard.

“She looks better,” Nico says as Nora runs past them, dodging Quentus’ snowballs.

Olivia nods. Nora’s not had a great year, but starting a new school, and having her brother home for a few months, has done wonders. It’s nice to see her smiling again. “She’s doing a lot better,” she tells him. Nico’s been deployed for most of the last year; as awful as it was watching her daughter’s anxiety spiral out of control in person, she wonders how much harder it was for him to watch his sister go through it all from afar, to hear about it in emails and vidcalls.

“Good,” he says, and draws her into a sideways hug.

Olivia smiles and hugs him back. He’s a good kid, all three of them are. Her omnitool beeps and she sits up to check it. Her smile widens - Garrus is finally on a transport here; it’s a private Council transport, so he’ll be here in the morning. She sends back a quick _see you soon_ and returns her attention to the snowball fight.

A snowball flies out from around the corner of the house, smacking into Nora’s shoulders. She turns around, indignant, and shoots her best attempt at a death glare toward Zaeed as he strolls into the backyard.

Olivia sizes up the situation - Nora’s speedy, and climbs trees, but Quentus is sneaky and Zaeed has wicked aim.

Nora comes to the same conclusion at the same time. “Don’t you dare throw that - god _dammit,_ Zaeed!” she laughs as another snowball explodes against her leg. “Mom, help!”

But Olivia’s one step ahead of her and launches two snowballs in rapid succession - one hitting Zaeed in the shoulder, the other hitting Quentus square in the chest. “Crap,” she says when the two men turn their attentions to her.

“Yeah,” Nico says. “You should run.”

“You just don’t want to get caught in the crossfire,” she grins, standing up. She brushes off her pants.

He shakes his head, smiling. “I _really_ don’t.”

She catches Nora’s eye and jerks her head toward the bushes at the side of the yard, and then ducks as Quentus throws a snowball at her. He misses by a mile, hitting the house instead. Olivia pauses before she starts running. Quentus is not a sniper, but she knows he has better aim than that.

Quentus shrugs. “I didn’t want to hit Nico.”

“Thank you,” Nico says, at the same time as Nora shouts, “Lousy excuse!” from behind the bushes.

“Are you in this or what, Shepard?” Zaeed asks, in cover behind a tree.

Olivia responds by throwing a snowball at a branch above him, so that it explodes and rains snow down upon his head. Zaeed sputters and pops out around the tree to retaliate, but she’s already halfway across the yard to join her daughter.


End file.
